


The End of Eternity

by ImprobableDreams900



Series: Eden!verse [5]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Asexual Relationship, Depression, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Heaven, Humor, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sort of major character death, Wings, headcanons, it's in there i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:38:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10869276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: Just because Aziraphale's dead doesn't mean he's gone.





	1. Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> Set concurrently with Chapters 25-29 of "A Memory of Eden."
> 
> This is a somewhat direct sequel to "A Memory of Eden," so I doubt it'll make a lick of sense if you haven't read that first. If you wanted to brush up on what happened in AMoE without (re)reading the entire thing, I took the liberty of writing a summary, which you can read here: http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/159960041823/summary-a-memory-of-eden
> 
> If you're interested in other miscellany from this universe, you can check out my Eden!verse masterpost, which includes links to summaries of the other fics in this universe, a chart showing the hierarchy of angels, sketches of Aziraphale and Crowley's Midfarthing cottage, and more! All here: http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/159960726218/edenverse-masterpost

Aziraphale blinked.

He was standing on the stretch of browning grass in front of his and Crowley’s cottage in Midfarthing. He could tell that was where he was because he was facing the narrow country lane that bordered the front of the lot. The leaves on the poorly-trimmed hedges on the other side of the lane fluttered soundlessly as an unfelt eddy of wind brushed over them. Aziraphale blinked again.

The former angel thought back, trying to parse what was happening. His memory was fuzzy and frighteningly blank in many areas, as it had been a lot recently, but things were starting to come back to him one by one.

He’d awoken this morning, he recalled, with the singular desire to tend to the flower gardens, as he had done every morning for years. Aziraphale had inched down the steps and made it outside easily enough, but the unexpected, sweltering heat had borne down on him like an iron blanket. He had only been weeding for a few minutes when the mounting heat and exertion had become unbearable. There’d been a sharp tingling in his chest and a loss of feeling, the tickle of long, waxy leaves against his cheek, and then…nothing.

No. Not nothing. Someone had been there with him, right at the end. Someone with high cheekbones and dark hair, someone with golden, serpentine eyes, who’d held him and begged him not to go—

Oh.

WE MEET AT LAST.

Aziraphale turned and saw the figure addressing him. Death was standing in front of the cottage, watching him with what might have been amusement. With a face like his, it was difficult to tell.

“So…this is it?” Aziraphale asked, hearing defeat settle into his tone. It was all adding up in his head now. “The end of the line?”

WHAT IS BEYOND IS NOT MY CONCERN, Death told him.

Aziraphale exhaled heavily and tiredly waved away his words. “You can save the usual speech,” he said. “We both know there’s nothing waiting for me on the other side. Angels only get the one go.” Aziraphale’s eyes were drawn to the hand he was waving in front of his own face and he stopped in surprise.

He blinked at it, and then looked down at himself. “I’m young again!” he exclaimed in puzzled delight. Then he paused and re-examined himself. “Well, young _er.”_

NOT REALLY, Death said. IT’S JUST HOW YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS RENDERS YOURSELF IN THIS SPACE.

Aziraphale frowned, deflating a little. “Makes sense, I suppose.” He patted himself down automatically anyway, feeling a sudden loathsomeness to leave even this memory of his corporation, even if he wouldn’t really be around to miss it.

ARE YOU READY TO GO? I HAVE A SCHEDULE TO KEEP.

“Yes, yes,” Aziraphale said. “Don’t worry; I know you’re just doing your job. I won’t cause any…trouble…” His voice trailed off. Aziraphale’s mind was jumping back to Crowley, and the expression on his face as he’d pulled Aziraphale close and said, _Only your best friend, angel._

Aziraphale bit his lip, feeling guilt settle heavy into the pit of his stomach. He shifted his gaze nervously to Death, and plucked up his courage. “Can I see him?” he asked. “Just…briefly? Before we go.”

Death debated. Or, at least, presumably he debated. It was difficult to tell.

“Consider it a dying man’s last wish,” Aziraphale added, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Who am I going to tell? Just…please. Just for a moment. It would mean a lot to me.”

Death reached out a skeletal hand and took one of the black, iridescent swaths of his robe in between his thumb and forefinger. He pivoted his hand, twitching the shimmering material to the side, and then stepped backward and turned away, revealing behind him two figures sitting on the browned grass, one slumped against the other.

Aziraphale wondered with a sudden, intense pang why he had thought this was a good idea. He knew where Crowley was—he knew he wasn’t still sleeping peacefully in his bed or knocking around in the kitchen making tea. He _knew_ that.

Crowley was sitting on the grass, as of course he would be, with Aziraphale’s motionless body slumped against him. The angel’s head was turned to the side and resting on Crowley’s far shoulder, thankfully out of view. Crowley had wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and buried his face in the crook of the former angel's neck, and, against all odds, he was sobbing. Aziraphale thought it was the single most wretched sound he had ever heard.

Before he could fully register any of this, he’d taken several automatic, shaky steps towards the demon. As he neared, Crowley sniffled, gasped, and twitched his head up, as though sensing his presence.

Aziraphale’s gaze was drawn immediately to Crowley’s face, briefly visible. The demon’s serpentine eyes were already ringed in red, and tears were streaking down his cheeks. As Aziraphale watched, transfixed, Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the side of his face against the motionless Aziraphale’s, as though willing the contact to bring him back.

Aziraphale raised a hand reflexively to his own cheek, imagining he felt the warmth of Crowley’s tear-streaked skin against his own.

Aziraphale’s legs went weak and he stumbled forward and dropped to his knees at Crowley’s side. The demon sniffled miserably and readjusted his grip on the Aziraphale in his arms, moving a hand further up his back and twining his fingers in the locks of hair at the nape of his neck.

A few more tears slipped down Crowley’s cheeks from his closed eyes, and Aziraphale’s hand moved forward automatically as he felt the sudden need to wipe them away. The back of his knuckles passed straight through Crowley, though, and Aziraphale had to forcibly remind himself that he wasn’t really there.

Crowley made a small, desperately heart-breaking little noise and redoubled his grip on Aziraphale, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks.

The former angel gazed at his friend wordlessly, and realised that he had never seen Crowley cry before.

And then he remembered why.

“No.” Aziraphale blanched. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled backwards, retreating from the insubstantial Crowley and his own lifeless form. He spun on Death. “He—he Fell? To human, I mean?”

Aziraphale felt tears of injustice spring to his own eyes. After everything—breaking into Heaven, Falling, almost losing Crowley, living as a human, and finally succumbing to the inevitable—after putting every ounce he had into the effort of saving Crowley’s life, the demon was now going to die _anyway?_

NO, Death said in a reasonable tone. QUITE THE OPPOSITE, IN FACT. He took another of his iridescent veils in his skeletal fingers, twitched it slightly, and suddenly the air was full of brilliant white feathers.

Aziraphale took a step backwards in surprise. Crowley’s wings were stretched out behind him, glossy white primaries half-raised, filling the air with a vibrant shimmer.

They were…beautiful.

Aziraphale had always thought Crowley’s wings were exquisite, and it helped that he kept them so neatly preened, but this was…something else entirely.

Aziraphale felt himself take a step forward, raising a hand to brush his fingers through the insubstantial feathers, admiring the kaleidoscopic shimmer of colour and the gleam of starlight. He felt a familiar pang of sadness for his own lost wings.

“He… _un_ Fell?”

YES.

Aziraphale lowered his hand, eyes trailing along his friend’s brilliant white wings. He paused when he reached the ragged gaps in the primaries, a stark reminder of what Heaven had done. Crowley hadn’t moulted since. The thought had never occurred to Aziraphale when he’d been mortal, but now he wished it had.

Moulting required a great deal of energy and was quite painful at best, downright dangerous at worst. Because of this, the process was usually undertaken in the relative safety of Heaven or Hell, but that hadn’t been an option for Crowley this time. Aziraphale would have gladly looked after him during the process, but it was too late now.

The thought of Crowley moulting on his own sent a pang through Aziraphale’s heart. Had Crowley not trusted him enough? As a human? As a friend? Or had it simply slipped his mind, as it had Aziraphale’s?

IT IS TIME TO GO, Death said from behind him.

Aziraphale nodded without moving.

In front of him, Crowley gave a wretched, broken sob and pulled what little he had left of Aziraphale closer. His ethereal wings shifted and, in one fluid motion, swept past where the intangible Aziraphale stood with Death. Crowley’s brilliant wings wrapped around himself and the figure he embraced, hiding the latter from view in a cascade of white feathers.

Aziraphale swallowed heavily. He could still sense Death standing behind him, and knew he’d need to get going soon.

Aziraphale forced his legs into motion, closing the distance between himself and Crowley. He bent towards Crowley’s trembling form, wanting to say one last thing to the demon—angel— _Crowley_ he cared for more dearly than life itself.

Aziraphale opened his mouth, desperate to say something, anything, and finding nothing.

Finally, he settled for placing his hand as close as he could to Crowley’s intangible shoulder, and said quietly, “Take care of yourself, my dear.” Aziraphale’s mouth twitched to the side as he tried and failed to get a more secure grip on Crowley’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Then, because Aziraphale was going to cease to be in a few short seconds and he wanted to do it just once before the end, he leaned over and gave Crowley a light, gentle kiss on his insubstantial, tear-streaked cheek.

Aziraphale straightened up, wiping at his own eyes. Remembering with a sad fondness how Crowley had always appreciated jokes where jokes had no business being, Aziraphale echoed his own words from a long-ago war and an unintentional discorporation: “Don’t let it get you down.”

Aziraphale’s voice broke on the last word and he turned away before he could stop himself, forcing himself to walk back towards the skeletal figure behind him.

“Thank you,” the Fallen angel told Death in a shaky voice. He swallowed. “I’m ready.”

Aziraphale turned, letting his eyes trail over Crowley’s shimmering white wings one last time. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a smile. “An angel again,” he said softly to himself. “After all this time.”

AND THAT’S NOT EVEN THE BEST PART, Death said confidentially, reaching out a skeletal hand to touch Aziraphale on the shoulder. THE BIG MAN WOULDN’T WANT ME TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT, BETWEEN YOU AND ME, HE’S NOT _JUST_ AN ANGEL. HE’S—

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale was at the good part.

The former angel sat bolt upright, sending the cup of tea that had been balanced on the edge of the armchair crashing to the floor.

Aziraphale blinked and looked around in surprise.

He was sitting in the back room of his London bookshop, and that was strange in and of itself. Following the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, Adam had restored the angel’s burned bookshop, but he hadn’t understood that Soho bookshops came with discreet back rooms, and had failed to include any in the new model. Since then, Aziraphale and Crowley had shifted to an upstairs room for—for—

Crowley.

 _—between you and me, he’s not_ just _an angel. He’s—_

Gleaming white feathers were drifting across Aziraphale’s memory, massive wings with every other primary missing, and _Crowley—_

— _not_ just _an angel._

There was a memory there, but it was slipping away like a dream, and the more Aziraphale struggled for it the more it evaded him.

Crowley—an angel?

There was a loud _schwap!_ and the tinkle of a bell.

Aziraphale jumped again, head snapping around towards the open door of the back room.

“Angel?”

The voice was Crowley’s, and it was coming from the direction of the bookshop proper. That made sense; the demon never bothered to knock.

The last confused thoughts faded from Aziraphale’s mind as he stood up, noticing as he did so that there was a book in his lap. Baffled, he put it back on the chair and walked out into the main room.

Crowley was striding towards him across the span of the bookshop, reaching up to push his sunglasses into his ruffled hair as he did so. “There you are, angel. Can I tempt you to St James’s?” The demon grinned at him, and Aziraphale felt something in him warm, like he’d stepped into a pool of sunlight on a summer day.

“Of course…” the angel began, intent on finishing his sentence with _you old serpent_ , just as he had for millennia, but his voice failed him halfway through. Something was wrong.

Crowley raised an eyebrow at him, but Aziraphale couldn’t manage to form his thoughts into words. He just took Crowley in.

The demon was exactly as Aziraphale remembered him, all slender lines and bespoke suit. His serpentine eyes were the same golden hue they’d always been, but there were faint laugh lines around them now, and around the corners of his mouth too. There was no hint of stress or worry on his face, though of course there was no reason for there to be. He was…perfect. Beautiful.

“Are you coming, angel?” Crowley asked when Aziraphale continued to stare at him.

The angel shook himself. “Yes, of course…my dear.”

When he still didn’t move, Crowley walked forward and grabbed him by the wrist. Aziraphale started at the contact, but the demon only rolled his eyes and dragged Aziraphale out of the bookshop.

The Bentley was sitting outside, sunlight gleaming off its sleek black surface.

Crowley walked around the front of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Aziraphale opened the passenger’s door slowly, hand hesitating on the silver chrome handle. Then he pulled the door open all the way and sank into the familiar leather seat. He had barely pulled the door closed before the gear stick jumped forward of its own accord and the Bentley pulled out into the road.

Aziraphale clung to the door as he usually did, but Crowley only broke one small traffic law. The angel didn’t fear for his life even a little.

As the Bentley turned calmly onto Oxford Street, going merely thirty miles per hour and easily avoiding all of the pedestrians, Crowley leaned towards the Blaupunkt and slid a cassette into it that he had produced from somewhere on his person.

“Brahms’ Concerto No. 5,” the demon informed him as the Bentley yielded conscientiously to the traffic already in the roundabout.

 _“This thing…called love…”_ Freddie sang, _“I just…can’t handle it…”_

Aziraphale glanced at the demon, but Crowley didn’t change the song, nor did he even protest when “You’re My Best Friend” came on next.

It was possibly the most pleasant ride in the Bentley Aziraphale had ever experienced.

When the demon finally parked, Aziraphale was almost sorry to depart the vintage car.

St James’s Park was also as the angel remembered it, and on the walk to the edge of the water Crowley miracled a loaf of bread into existence, tore it in half, and handed the larger part to him.

Something in the back of his head was still nagging at Aziraphale, something urgent and distressing, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

“I think I’ve got the plants right where I want them,” Crowley said, derailing Aziraphale’s train of thought.

“Pardon?”

“The plants. Back at my flat. I’ve been threatening them for so long, I think maybe a nice long reprieve will do the trick. Really make them wonder what I’m planning.”

“Hm,” Aziraphale agreed, something occurring to him that he’d always wondered but never bothered to ask before. “Whatever did you do with the ones you threw out, before?”

Crowley pointed to a nearby row of short, mismatched plants Aziraphale had never noticed before, growing right along the edge of the very path they were walking on. “What, you thought those grew there like that on accident?”

Aziraphale blinked and looked at the demon. “Oh, my dear, that’s so thoughtful!”

Crowley shrugged and flipped his sunglasses back down onto his nose. “You know me; I’m mean, not malicious.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Yes…”

 _And yet this isn’t like you at all,_ he thought to himself worriedly. _Obeying traffic laws, looking after your plants…_ but wait. There had been a time, once, Aziraphale was certain, that Crowley _had_ obeyed traffic laws. They’d been on a trip of some sort, going somewhere very important…

“Look at all the ducks!” Crowley interrupted, nudging Aziraphale in the shoulder.

The angel looked up, nodding but not really seeing.

Something was deeply wrong here, but Aziraphale just couldn’t quite get ahold of what it was. The feeling of urgency was back. Something terrible was happening somewhere, he was sure, and it was all his fault…

“Let’s just relax and enjoy the afternoon, angel,” Crowley said, leading Aziraphale over to a bench and all but forcing him onto it.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, still distracted. There was a knot in his stomach and it didn’t feel like it would be easing anytime soon.

Crowley started throwing chunks of bread at the ducks and making the latter sink, but Aziraphale was staring at the water. It was so clear and clean, and for that matter so was the park itself. Not a piece of litter anywhere. And there were so few other people. And the sky—there wasn’t a wisp of cloud anywhere.

He remembered another cloudless day, sitting on a bench beside Crowley, and the demon had been uncharacteristically quiet as Aziraphale had clung to his arm and pointed out some cute ducklings…

“Come on, angel, don’t you want to feed the ducks? Look at the poor things; they’ll starve without you.”

Aziraphale blinked and looked over at the demon. He had a sudden unplaceable feeling that this Crowley was, somehow, not _his_ Crowley.

The angel searched his friend’s face, but nothing seemed amiss. Every inch of Crowley’s face was as it should have been, and it was all so comfortingly familiar.

Before he realised what he was doing, Aziraphale had reached out and was trailing the back of his knuckles gently down the demon’s cheek, transfixed.

With no warning, a series of images was flashing before Aziraphale’s eyes, each very real and solid, surfacing from his memory like the ducks the demon had sunk earlier. The chunk of bread in Aziraphale’s other hand fell lax to the grass and rolled underneath the bench.

He saw Crowley, but he was barely conscious and his gorgeous black wings had been pinned to the wall behind him, the _monsters—_

Crowley was unconscious in his arms, and now Aziraphale could feel his breaths winding down, the demon’s wings spread behind him on the plastic sheeting, bleeding and ravaged—

Aziraphale miserably swung open the cottage door and, against every logical conclusion, it was _Crowley_ , and he was holding something that smelled very much like breakfast—

The demon had fallen asleep on his shoulder again, and Aziraphale finished off the bottle himself, glad to have spent another Christmas in such excellent company—

Crowley was sitting on the floor surrounded by the ruins of an antique clock, thinking that Aziraphale cared for _it_ more than _him—_

The demon was screaming and shaking him, and Aziraphale just wanted to remember who this _my dear_ was that he had written so lovingly about in the row of slim black journals—

Crowley was begging him to repent, pressing a length of rope into his hands and telling him that this was what he wanted—

Crowley was sitting on the sun-baked grass, face twisted in grief and tears rolling down his cheeks—

_Only your best friend, angel._

And then Aziraphale remembered everything.

“Let’s do the Ritz,” Crowley suggested, standing up and tossing the rest of his bread to the ducks.

Aziraphale, still processing, looked blankly up at the demon.

“Come on, it’ll be swell,” Crowley said, tugging gently on his arm. “They’ll have cream cakes and those little cucumber sandwiches you love…”

Aziraphale blinked and focussed on the demon. He took him in again, and then where he was. It all clicked into place.

He really shouldn’t have been all that surprised.

“Angel—”

“Don’t call me that.” Aziraphale stood, shaking off Crowley’s hand. He looked around himself again, taking in the park. “They do a good job; I’ll give them that,” the former angel muttered, inspecting the wood grain of the bench critically. “I’ve never seen the system from the inside before.”

“What are you talking about?” Crowley—no, _Not-Crowley_ —said.

Aziraphale waved his words away and started off in the direction they’d come.

“Hang on, angel—”

“I said, don’t call me that,” Aziraphale snapped, already striding away.

Not-Crowley hurried to catch up and fell into step beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“You know what,” Aziraphale grumbled, refusing to grace the imposter with a glance. How could he have thought that this was the real Crowley, _his_ Crowley, for even a second?

“Know what?” Not-Crowley asked innocently.

“You know because I know,” Aziraphale said, spotting the Bentley and making a beeline for it. “And you’re just a…a projection of my subconscious. A figment of my imagination.”

Not-Crowley scoffed in a very believable manner. “Me? A figment of _your_ imagination? Angel, you couldn’t _imagine_ someone like me.”

“You’ve got that right,” Aziraphale said, sneaking a guilty glance at Not-Crowley out of the corner of his eye. “You’re far too nice. You don’t act like him at all.”

“What, you don’t like me treating you well?” Not-Crowley asked, offended.

Aziraphale sighed and came to a stop beside the Bentley. “I—it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just—I don’t want you to be what _I_ want you to be. I want you to be what _you_ want to be. I didn’t—I don’t like you because you act like _me_. I like you because you act like _you.”_

Not-Crowley thought that over. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense, angel.”

Aziraphale scowled at him. “It makes perfect sense,” he snapped. “And stop calling me that.”

“Hey,” Not-Crowley protested, holding up his hands in surrender. “If I’m just a projection of your subconscious or whatever, then clearly _your_ subconscious likes it.”

“Get in the car and drive.”

Not-Crowley smirked and a minute later they were speeding down the Mall, heading back towards Soho.

When the Blaupunkt picked up playing “You’re My Best Friend” where it had left off, Aziraphale was the one who leaned forward and turned it off.

Not-Crowley raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

It wasn’t long before the demon was pulling the Bentley back into its usual spot outside the bookshop, and Aziraphale got out before it had even stopped moving.

The former angel was halfway across the shop by the time Not-Crowley hurried in after him, the bell tinkling as he pushed open the door.

“I think we both need to just calm down a little,” the demon said, but Aziraphale ignored him.

The angel raked his eyes along the books on the nearest bookcase, and was relieved to find that they belonged to his original collection, not the one Adam had left him after the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t.

Aziraphale debated for a moment and then walked down one of the aisles. Not-Crowley followed him.

“So what if I’m not _really_ him?” the demon asked as Aziraphale turned and started poking among the books, looking for a particular title. “What does it matter?”

“I already told you,” Aziraphale huffed. “It’s just not the same.” The angel’s questing fingers found the book he was looking for and pulled it out. He looked down at it for a moment and then tucked it under his arm and started further down the aisle.

“But you can’t reach him,” Not-Crowley pointed out, following him doggedly down the aisle. Aziraphale stopped to search for another book, and the demon leaned casually against the shelves. “Little though you may like it, you’re stuck here. You’re dead.”

Aziraphale paused in his search to scowl at the imposter. “You think I don’t know that?”

“Like I said,” Not-Crowley said. “Stuck.”

“Not…quite,” Aziraphale said, pulling out a book and glancing at the cracked leather cover, frowning. He flipped it open.

“What, you know how to break out of Heaven? Going to sneak past Jophiel and climb down to Earth on a long celestial rope? Have fun with that.”

“Not exactly,” Aziraphale mumbled, only half-listening as his eyes scanned the table of contents page. He flipped to the next spread.

“So what’re you trying to do, then? You can’t contact him. You can’t get to him. You’re trapped in this reality, this…little slice of Heaven.”

“And don’t think I’m not surprised,” Aziraphale said as he snapped the book shut and slid it back onto its shelf. He paused, one hand still on the book’s embossed leather spine, considering the implications of the imagined demon’s words. “Who would have thought I’d end up with an immortal soul when I Fell? And why…why _Heaven?”_

Not-Crowley shrugged, still leaning against the bookcase. “If you don’t know, how would I?”

Aziraphale frowned at him. Then he turned back to the shelves, pulled another book from its place, and brushed the dust off the cover. He added it to the other book he was resting against his side and continued down the aisle.

“I’m just saying,” Aziraphale’s memory of Crowley continued as the former angel walked back to the centre of the bookshop and dropped the books onto a table that had almost certainly not been there before. “There’s nothing you can do for him. So why put yourself through more pain trying to accomplish the impossible? Just forget about him and stay with me.”

Aziraphale ignored him and sat down at the table. He pulled the nearest book towards him and flipped it open.

“What _are_ you doing?” asked Not-Crowley, who was incredibly annoying for being a figment of Aziraphale’s imagination.

“Looking for a spell,” the former angel muttered as he flipped through the book. “I read about one back in…oh, 1672? ’73?”

“Good Lord, he remembers the bloody _year_ , _”_ Not-Crowley announced to no one in particular, pulling himself up so he could sit on the edge of the table.

“And somewhere around page two hundred and thirty, I should think,” Aziraphale said mildly.

Not-Crowley groaned, the familiar reaction eliciting a small smile from the former angel. He may not be able to imagine Crowley perfectly, but he did know the demon awfully well.

“Ah, here it is,” Aziraphale said a moment later, tapping the appropriate page with his finger. “Two hundred and twenty-six,” he added smugly.

The demon craned his head over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “So what’s this spell do?”

“Strictly speaking it’s a scrying spell,” the former angel admitted, scanning the particulars of the spell and glancing over the sigil carefully printed on the adjoining page, “and it’s engineered to show particular locations on Earth, but I think with a little persuasion I can convince it to tether its focus to a person…” Aziraphale trailed off, engrossed in the text.

“Hmph,” Crowley said. The demon tapped his fingers in a bored fashion on the side of the table.

“I need a mirror,” Aziraphale announced once he’d finished reading. “Or really, anything reflective, but a mirror would probably work the best.” He looked up at the demon. “Where can I get one?”

Crowley shrugged. “How would I know? It’s your heaven.”

“My heaven,” Aziraphale repeated. “Yes.” An idea occurred to him, and he looked up at Crowley excitedly. “This was never my department, but each human soul is allotted a patch of Heaven, right? It’s a sort of sandbox for their minds to fill with whatever they want. So eternity isn’t just you staring at a blank wall.”

“So just _imagine_ you have a mirror,” Crowley suggested.

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at him. “It’s not the same as willing or miracling things on Earth,” he said. “I don’t have my powers back. The individual heavens are designed to keep the soul inhabiting it happy, not wait on their every whim.”

“Well, wouldn’t you be happier if you had a mirror?”

Aziraphale scowled.

_Rap. Rap._

Aziraphale looked up and glanced at the door of the bookshop, but the sound hadn’t come from that direction.

“What was that?” Aziraphale asked. It had sounded suspiciously like someone knocking on a door.

Crowley shrugged and hopped off the edge of the table. The sound came again, clearly from the back of the bookshop this time.

Aziraphale stood up and wound his way around the table towards the source of the noise, noticing as he did so a door set into the back wall that certainly hadn’t been in his original Soho bookshop.

The former angel walked towards it warily, Crowley two steps behind him. Aziraphale pushed open the door hesitantly and found himself looking at the interior of his and Crowley’s cottage in Midfarthing.

Aziraphale blinked.

There was another knock, and a voice called, “Hallo? Anyone about?”

Aziraphale walked forward automatically, crossing the living room and opening the front door.

“Ah, Mr Ziraphale!” Oscar the postman greeted him, hefting a box in one arm. “Package for you.”

“Er,” said Aziraphale, clumsily accepting the package Oscar pushed into his hands.

“Say, are you doing all right? You look a little pale.”

The former angel blinked at the postman, but he seemed genuine. Aziraphale’s imagination had apparently done a fairly decent job of rendering Oscar as well, neatly trimmed moustache and all.

“Just fine, thanks,” Aziraphale mumbled, and shut the door in his face, telling himself that the postman wasn’t any more real than the version of Crowley currently lounging on the sofa.

“What do you want to bet it’s a mirror?” the demon asked, crossing his legs and stretching out luxuriously.

Aziraphale muttered something under his breath and dropped the package on the kitchen table.

“And what do you know; looks like you’ve got the bookshop _and_ the cottage,” Crowley commented. “That’s neat.”

Aziraphale ignored him, walking into the kitchen instead to retrieve a Stanley knife. As he fished the box cutter out of a mug on the counter, he felt a sharp pang of familiarity.

He and Crowley had cooked in this kitchen so many times. Aziraphale had had to, of course, since his newly mortal body demanded it…but Crowley hadn’t. He had done it solely to make Aziraphale feel more at home.

“Hey, angel,” Not-Crowley’s voice came from the other room. “Do you reckon we can get drunk in Heaven? Because I bet I would be _far_ happier with some top-shelf wine right about now…”

Aziraphale walked back into the living room, and his eyes fell automatically on the row of bookshelves surrounding the fireplace. His gaze dropped to the hearth, and he felt himself still as memories overtook him, the Stanley knife lax in his hand.

First, he saw the blackbird that had tumbled down the chimney, crying and trying to beat its wings as fire raced along their black lengths, having suffered a fatal fall. The memory of the journals surfaced next, as Aziraphale, frightened and confused, shoved the impossible volumes into the flames, unable to reconcile the handwritten confessions with the terrifying emptiness in his mind.

Then the former angel’s eyes slid inexorably upwards, along his collection of books to rest on the orderly row of slim black journals. _They were still there._

“The journals…” Aziraphale breathed, feeling guilt crash over him like a wave as the full implications of his actions finally became clear to him. The grip of the Stanley knife was cutting into his hand but he didn’t register it.

He’d _burned_ the journals, destroyed them all in a moment of weakness. And that was after he’d taken all that time to write them for Crowley in the first place, and to include in them some fraction of what he felt for the demon who had been his best and only friend for six thousand years. They were to have been his last, parting gift to Crowley, a way for the demon to remember him if he’d felt so inclined. And instead Aziraphale had _burned them._

“Oh, _God.”_ Aziraphale’s hand went to his mouth, and he felt a little ill. He remembered Crowley’s reaction, and how the demon had shaken him, demanding to know what he’d done with them, unable to put together the conclusion obvious from the evidence around him, unable to believe that Aziraphale could had betrayed him. When Crowley had finally given up the fight and pulled Aziraphale into an exhausted embrace, the former angel had never felt the gesture was more undeserved. _“Crowley…”_

Without his quite knowing when, the other Crowley had come up beside him and placed a gentle hand on his elbow. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

Aziraphale turned horrified eyes on the demon. Crowley looked sincere, and the former angel found himself desperately wanting to believe him, to believe that Crowley had forgiven him for this terrible offense.

“Forget about it,” the demon urged him. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve lived a long life, and had more than your fair share of suffering and pain. Let it go. You’ve done your part, and this is your reward. This...heaven. It’s okay to enjoy it.”

Aziraphale swallowed, just drinking in the visage of his friend before him. He did look so very much like the real Crowley, and Aziraphale imagined that he could maybe one day forget the difference. He could stay here, in this odd dual world of his bookshop and their cottage, and carry on with the demon like nothing had happened. No one would think any less of him.

 _His_ Crowley was absent and unreachable, but this one could offer absolution and companionship. And he was right after all; the angel deserved a break. Someone had clearly decided that his human soul was better suited to Heaven than Hell, and didn’t that mean he had earned this little paradise?

Aziraphale looked into Crowley’s golden, serpentine eyes, and thought that living here with Crowley forever truly was the best way to spend eternity.

Then he swallowed and looked away. Maybe _someone_ had decided he deserved Heaven over Hell, but he wasn’t sure he agreed. He remembered the last few years of his mortal life, and how he had treated, mistreated, and ignored Crowley. He remembered the demon’s half-hidden sniffles and quiet pauses, but also the way he had steadfastly stayed by Aziraphale’s side through it all, and never once asked for anything in return except for Aziraphale to keep on living. He could still almost feel the demon’s arms around him as his life ebbed away among the lilies, still see the pure, terrified desperation in his golden eyes.

Aziraphale turned abruptly, pulling away from the false Crowley’s comfort and walking determinedly back towards the kitchen table. He fought back a sniffle as he ran the blade of the Stanley knife along the plastic tape on the box. He opened the flaps and pulled a small rectangular mirror out of a wad of packing foam. It was a little smaller than a sheet of paper, and encased in a plain silver frame.

Aziraphale set it on the table and went into the kitchen again to fetch a felt-tip pen. Crowley was standing next to the table when he returned, examining the mirror critically.

“Not very fancy.”

“It’s not for you,” Aziraphale snapped, more harshly than he’d intended, snatching the mirror from him and walking back through the new door and into the bookshop.

“Tetchy, are we?”

Aziraphale ignored him as he set the mirror on the table next to the open book and began copying the sigil onto the surface of the glass.

Crowley scooted back onto the edge of the table, heedless of Aziraphale’s chilly demeanour. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he pointed out. “He’d never know. He thinks you’re dead. Properly dead, I mean.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale ground out, carefully altering one of the glyphs in the sigil to include _persona_ alongside the sign for _locus_.

“You might not like what you see,” Crowley cautioned as Aziraphale finished with the sigil and chanted a few words from the book. The black marker on the surface of the mirror gleamed brightly and faded from view, leaving only the smooth, unmarked surface of the glass.

The demon put his hand on Aziraphale’s wrist, and the former angel’s eyes met his. Crowley’s hand was warm against his skin, and very solid. “You won’t like what you see,” the demon corrected. “Trust me.”

Aziraphale, feeling his irritation wane—he could never stay angry with Crowley for very long, not even an imagined Crowley—gave him a faint smile. He let out a long breath. “I know that. I just…even if I can’t help him, I can’t leave him. Not alone. Not like this.”

Crowley nodded, but his hand remained on Aziraphale’s wrist. “Is this place really so bad?” the demon asked. “Am I such a poor substitute?”

“I can tell the difference, if that’s what you mean,” the former angel admitted. “But, then again, I know how the system works. And this place is…” Aziraphale looked around himself, at the exact replica of the bookshop he’d lost on Earth. “It’s nice, but I’ll take him over it any day.”

Crowley gave him a small, sad smile.

Aziraphale turned back to the mirror. If the spell had worked, he needed to only ask for what he wished to see. “Crowley” was a bit vague, so he was hoping a more specific name would suffice.

The former angel opened his mouth, but Crowley’s hand moved further up his arm, coming to a stop at his elbow. “Wait,” he said.

Aziraphale looked over at him; the demon was biting his lower lip and looking a little desperate. He raised his eyes to meet the former angel’s, and they were shining with honesty.

“Aziraphale—angel—I love you.”

Aziraphale felt a sad smile twitch at the corner of his mouth as he looked into the demon’s beautiful golden eyes. “I know that, my dear,” he said kindly. “But Crowley would never say it.”

He turned back to the mirror. “Show me the Serpent of Eden.”

Beside him, the imagined Crowley faded away as a much more real, but also completely unreachable, Crowley came into view in the mirror.


	2. The Mirror

Aziraphale had never quite been certain how Crowley felt about him.

Since even before the Arrangement, he and the demon had been on reasonably good terms, and though they had certainly tried—and often succeeded—in discorporating each other, there had rarely been any true malice in it.

Once the Arrangement had been reached, things smoothed out considerably between them. The time they would have normally spent trying to discorporate each other without any particular enthusiasm was turned into long nights at taverns, drinking what passed for wine and comparing the management techniques of their respective bosses.

Time had passed, and as civilisations rose and fell around them, Aziraphale found himself rather enjoying the demon’s company. He always had to thwart Crowley’s wiles, of course, just as the demon had to derail his celestial plans, but that had become a lesser priority.

There were little bumps along the way; occasionally Crowley would do something so nasty and downright _demonic_ that Aziraphale would refuse to associate with him for a decade or two, but the same was just as true in reverse. It came down to the fact that they were still playing for very different teams. It didn’t matter how much they had in common; Hell would always be hovering right over Crowley’s shoulder, and Heaven his own. It was just the way things were—all part of the ineffable plan.

But, despite these hiccups, Aziraphale felt himself growing fonder and fonder of the demon, and it seemed the same was true, to some extent, in reverse. Crowley once rescued him from a stray hellhound, another time dragged him from the ruins of a villa near Herculaneum, and even knocked him out of the path of a cavalryman’s sword at the Battle of Cannae. Aziraphale had done his best to repay the favour, of course, hiding Crowley from an angry crowd of religious fanatics determined to sacrifice the snake-eyed demon and later healing him after a stray arrow almost discorporated him at Carthage.

Sometime in the fourth century, while trying to broker peace with yet another Roman force—this one aimed at wiping out the Franks—it occurred to Aziraphale quite suddenly that Crowley was his friend.

One of Gabriel’s people had visited him recently, informing him that Christianity would soon be coming to the Romans and forcing Aziraphale to work briefly with a handful of thrones and cherubim to make sure that the potential opposition was eliminated. The other angels were of the traditional, time-honoured view that it was better to smite first and ask questions later, and weren’t interested in his protests that humanity really was improving vastly.

It turned out they’d only been interested in him for his knowledge of local customs, and they’d conveniently arranged for him to be in the wrong part of the city while they carried out their mission without him. By the time they finished their work and left, without so much as a thank-you aimed in his general direction, Aziraphale was feeling quite uneasy with Heaven in general, and Gabriel in particular.

As he sat on the corner of a plinth and miserably reflected on his predicament, it occurred to him that Crowley would never have used him in such a manner. Or, if he had, he would have come back afterwards and found some way to make it up to him, with some tale that Below would have done something extremely unpleasant to him if he hadn’t complied. Aziraphale harboured no illusions that his angelic brothers would arrive to apologise any time soon.

The next millennium was much busier than the preceding ones, and the humans started inventing things at a truly rapid pace. Crowley liked staying up-to-date with every new development, and though Aziraphale usually trailed several decades behind, he was aware that the two of them were probably the only two immortal beings who really understood the power of this new thing called the printing press.

As the centuries flew by, Crowley became dearer and dearer to Aziraphale without the angel ever quite noticing it. When the nineteenth rolled around and the demon decided to really embrace the concept of sleep, Aziraphale found himself truly and painfully lonely for the first time in his very long life. When Aziraphale first laid eyes on him afterwards, very well-rested but eager to catch up on all that he had missed…it had been such a very welcome sight.

The two spent much of the ensuing century in London, watching as the world reinvented itself and welcomed in a new age. Aziraphale stayed in his Soho bookshop for most of it, but always felt his spirits lift when Crowley dropped by to take him out to the Ritz or just show off his new car.

And then the world had nearly come to an end. As Lucifer had started to claw his way into the physical plane, Aziraphale had realised quite suddenly that, even if Heaven won the final battle, he didn’t want to be a part of what came after. A post-Apocalyptic world, even one where Heaven reigned…putting aside the fact that it would have simply been dreadfully boring, Aziraphale realised that it would also be quite empty. Who would drag him out of his bookshop and encourage him to see the light of day every now and then? Who would debate the ineffable plan with him, and sink ducks in St James’s Park, and terrorise houseplants? Where would Crowley be in this sequence of events?

And Aziraphale had realised that he would rather die here, trying to stop it all from happening with Crowley at his side, than live in a perfect, heavenly world without him.

After the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, Crowley came by more and more often, until he was dropping by the bookshop every day, chatting with the angel or amusing himself by luring unsuspecting pedestrians into the adult bookshop across the street.

On one rainy afternoon, the demon sauntered into his shop and declared his intention to accompany Aziraphale to St James’s Park, even if he had to personally relocate the clouds to Greenwich.

Aziraphale walked around the corner of a bookcase, where he’d been meticulously inspecting the details of his new collection, and felt a smile cross his face of its own volition.

And as he looked at the demon, the sight of him was so comfortingly, achingly familiar that it seemed to Aziraphale that he had never been more perfectly, blissfully content than he was in that moment. And then it occurred to Aziraphale, as unobtrusively as if someone had whispered it in his ear, that he was in love with Crowley.

The thought settled comfortably into his head even as Crowley told him to hurry up, he’d left the Bentley running, and the conclusion had never seemed more natural. It was simply putting a name to something that had been brewing deep within him for what he thought was probably centuries. He was in love with Crowley.

But Crowley, it seemed, was not in love with him.

Aziraphale had, rather naïvely, assumed that Crowley’s idea of their relationship had developed in the same manner as his had. But that no longer seemed to be the case.

He started paying more attention to Crowley, looking for any sign of what the demon felt. He certainly _acted_ like they were good friends, but whenever Crowley introduced them, he never specified their affiliation. Whenever a term was required, Crowley usually settled for “associate.” As far as Aziraphale could tell, Crowley had an unconscious aversion to the word “friend.” Whenever Aziraphale used the term, or mentioned tangentially that they might be something else, the demon somehow changed the subject, or made a cheap joke and then found a reason to leave the room. Once, Aziraphale mentioned how long of a drive it was from the demon’s flat to his bookshop, angling to find out if Crowley wanted to maybe just stay with him, but the demon had merely commented that he didn’t mind the drive, and then diverted the conversation flawlessly onto the subject of the Bentley.

On one such occasion, Aziraphale had sighed heavily and asked Crowley why he did that. The demon had looked so honestly confused that Aziraphale realised he really didn’t know he was doing it.

For a short while, Aziraphale wondered if they were really friends at all, but he soon convinced himself that, even if Crowley refused to acknowledge it, the truth was plain to see. Shortly thereafter, the angel posited that maybe it was Crowley’s demonic nature that was to blame.

It wasn’t difficult for angels to love, and though Aziraphale had never felt the slightest inclination to extend such emotion towards another living being, not for six millennia, it wasn’t against his basic nature.

For Crowley, on the other hand…demons weren’t built to love. They were built to hate, and betray, and scheme. Maybe Crowley had once been an angel, but Falling had done something to Lucifer’s followers. Aziraphale might have thought Crowley incapable of love, except that that clearly wasn’t the case. The demon loved the Bentley, for one thing. He loved humanity, and being cool and classy, and clearly loved his well-groomed wings.

But love for an act or a possession wasn’t the same as for another person; Aziraphale was finding that out the hard way. Maybe it wasn’t that Crowley was _incapable_ of loving him, he reflected sadly one day. Maybe it was just that the demon didn’t want to.

And though, even when Aziraphale racked his extremely thorough memory, he couldn’t think of a single instance when Crowley had actually called him his friend, he was certain that he was, at least, that. He didn’t need the demon to verbally corroborate what he already knew, what he could see plain as day on the demon’s face or in his constant presence at the bookshop.

So Crowley didn’t love him, but it appeared that he liked him plenty as a friend, and that had to count for something.

So Aziraphale kept his thoughts tucked away, telling himself that there was no sense in ruining a perfectly good, millennia-old friendship over something as trivial as his emotions. No, he would carry on as he had before, drop the occasional hint here and there to test the waters, and enjoy as much of the demon’s company as Crowley felt comfortable giving him and not a minute more.

It was painful, for a while, seeing Crowley and not being able to confess the truth to him, but it was a sting Aziraphale soon came to accept. He would wait, and if Crowley could, in time, grow to love him, then he would. And if he couldn’t, or if he didn’t want to, then he wouldn’t. In either case, it wasn’t Aziraphale’s place to push the decision on him. He would accept the title of “associate,” or anything else the demon deigned to give him, and if that was all he’d ever be to Crowley, then that was all he’d ever be. He couldn’t ask the demon to like him any more than he already did, couldn’t ask him to modify his behaviour to meet his own selfish desires. So he loved Crowley quietly, and thought to himself that, even if Crowley never returned his affections, he would always be a very dear friend, even if Crowley never admitted it.

And then two grey-suited angels appeared in Aziraphale’s bookshop. They told him that they were aware of his growing association with Crowley, and that the demon had placed a spell over him to control his actions. No angel in his right mind would have defied Heaven so openly during the attempted Apocalypse, they explained; it was the only logical explanation.

The implications were laughable; if Crowley had put him under a spell, he was certain the demon would have taken advantage of it at some point or another. Instead, he’d merely miracled up some more bookcases and convinced him to accompany him to the Ritz on a more regular basis.

But then the angels’ words took a pointed turn, and Aziraphale realised that they were serious. They meant to do whatever was necessary to remove the spell, and if the usual sigils wouldn’t work, they clearly intended to attempt to trace Aziraphale’s affection for the demon to its source. Given that they were unlikely to believe Aziraphale even if he confessed the full truth, this likely meant he would be... _compelled_ to be more cooperative.

Aziraphale was outnumbered two to one, but even with Crowley upstairs he didn’t dare call for help, didn’t dare put the demon in jeopardy. If he had any chance of getting out of this with his skin in one piece, he had to convince them he had no association with Crowley at all, and finding the demon waiting for him upstairs would hardly convince them of that.

But then Crowley came down the stairs of his own accord, and stepped in to defend Aziraphale. They fought, and everything went a little fuzzy when Aziraphale remembered being slammed into one of his own bookcases.

The next thing he remembered was blinking awake to see Crowley mouthing at him to run. The demon was as white as a sheet, and clearly terrified, but he wasn’t struggling. He simply stood there, between the two grey-suited angels with their backs to Aziraphale, and looked straight at him with those beautiful, frightened golden eyes, and vanished in a flare of white light.

It took four days for Aziraphale to realise that Crowley must have talked himself into being taken voluntarily. It seemed he had been selling Crowley short after all; the demon wouldn’t have risked life and limb for someone he considered merely an associate. And Crowley wasn’t dim by any stretch of the imagination; he must have realised what was in store for him. A demon dragged to Heaven under suspicion of having enchanted an angel? He must have known what that meant for him, what that could only mean.

And he had gone anyway.

That cemented it in Aziraphale’s mind, his previous doubts fleeing him. Crowley’s affections clearly ran deeper than he had suspected. Whether Crowley considered him anything more than a friend was still an unknown quantity, but clearly the demon considered him an extremely close friend, at the very least. Even if Aziraphale would never hear the words from his mouth, it was nice to know that it was true.

On the other hand, the angel would have gladly remained in the dark if it meant Crowley was still safe by his side. Instead, the demon was trapped in Heaven, and from what information Aziraphale managed to collect, he was being compelled quite thoroughly to give up his secrets. He heard snippets from the rumours circling Heaven, and knew that if even half of them were true, Crowley must be suffering terribly at their hands.

It was then that Aziraphale decided that he would rescue Crowley at any cost. It didn’t matter if he died, or was made to take his place, or even if he Fell; if Crowley was delivered from that terrible fate, then it would all be worth it. He would accept any price he was made to pay. It didn’t matter if Crowley loved him; _he_ loved _Crowley_ , and the very thought of the surprisingly kind-hearted demon being subjected to such horrors, and on _his_ behalf, made the angel feel physically ill.

Weeks later, when Aziraphale finally hurried across the last stretch of Heavenly grass with the barely-conscious demon sagging against him, he knew that he had made the right decision. The Crowley clinging to him with desperate, shaking, ice-cold fingers was a far cry from the one with whom he was familiar, doing everything he was asked without a single complaint or sarcastic remark and blindly trusting Aziraphale to take him to safety. It was a small miracle that the demon trusted him at all, after what Samkiel had put him through; Aziraphale wouldn’t have blamed Crowley in the slightest if he had spent the whole time snarling at him and trying to escape on his own. Instead, he’d only clung to the angel and whimpered weakly as Aziraphale carefully folded up the demon’s recently broken wing and drew him into his arms, carrying him as quickly as he could towards the low stone wall that marked the edge of Heaven.

But then Aziraphale Fell, and his hopes of ever being anything more to Crowley were dashed against the same ground.

Crowley healed him afterwards, yes, but Aziraphale wasn’t so naïve as to read anything into it. Crowley was probably just doing it to repay him, saving his mortal life in exchange for Aziraphale having rescued him from Heaven. Or maybe it was just one last favour from an old friend.

Afterwards, Crowley kept saying he was going to “get Aziraphale back” and he knew that the demon saw him as markedly changed. Aziraphale didn’t _feel_ different, not in any meaningful way, except for that he could feel life running through him like sand through an hourglass. And really that made all the difference in the world.

It was possible Crowley might have been able to love him when he’d been an angel, but he understood that his Falling meant that all bets were off. He was no longer Crowley’s equal; he was a mortal burden. He’d have to eat, and sleep, and do all of those pedestrian, mundane things that were required for humans to continue living. And the end of his road now had an abrupt end, cut short in less than half a century.

Even when Crowley accompanied him to Midfarthing, Aziraphale knew right from the start that it would never work. The demon loved London, and his Bentley, and freedom too much, Aziraphale thought, to stay trapped in such a small village for decades, under any circumstances. And the demon deserved to be free; he deserved to drive the Bentley and feel the wind in his feathers and do as he pleased. Just because Aziraphale was chained to the Earth didn’t mean that Crowley shouldn’t be able to fly. Aziraphale had always thought that love was selfless, but giving the demon up was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

And then Aziraphale’s patience with Crowley snapped for the first time in centuries, and he drove from his life the one thing he really cared about, the only thing that truly _mattered_. As he sat in the darkened, silent cottage with nothing left to remind him of Crowley but a single feather, it really hit him just what it meant to be alone, and that he was always going to feel that way, right until the end.

And then a knock came at the door. Aziraphale, utterly miserable and with the tightest of knots in his stomach, answered it only to see that—impossibly, miraculously—Crowley had come back to him.

It was then that Aziraphale realised, in a single, shining bolt of understanding, that Crowley loved _him_. Truly and properly _loved_ him. Because there was no other reason Aziraphale could fathom that Crowley would give up London, and the Bentley, and his freedom, and everything else the demon loved, except for if Crowley loved him more.

It was an incredible, stirring realisation, even if it came too late to change anything. Aziraphale was still going to die, and there was nothing to be gained by telling the demon how he felt about him at this late stage. Even if Crowley responded favourably (and there was no saying that he would), it would have been cruel to potentially deepen Crowley’s affection for him, only for Aziraphale to die in forty years’ time. Aziraphale was many things, but cruel wasn’t one of them.

So he kept his thoughts to himself, and marvelled at how easily Crowley adapted to domestic life. The demon had always been such a fan of flashy cars and fancy restaurants that it was almost unfathomable to watch him settle in—and later, even seem to enjoy himself—around the same handful of people day in and day out, walking everywhere and even _buying_ groceries. But then again, Crowley had always been quick to catch on to new things, far quicker than Aziraphale ever had. And being able to wake up every morning and know that Crowley was either sleeping nearby or just downstairs, and that he would get to share almost every minute of his short, mundane human life with the person he cherished above all others…It was easily the best ten years of Aziraphale’s life.

And then it was, if possible, the worst seven.

Some of it was great, just as wonderful as the previous ten, but the guilt was beginning to settle heavily on Aziraphale’s shoulders and he knew that, if he cared for Crowley at all, he ought to start emotionally disentangling himself from the demon. He had no idea how Crowley would react when he finally reached the end of his days, but he hoped to minimise the effect as much as he could. He wrote the journals, explaining how much he cared for the demon while leaving out all the important details and truths Aziraphale had learned so recently. Telling Crowley after his death, Aziraphale thought, would be worse than having told him while he was alive. It would have been selfish and cowardly, and though Aziraphale was occasionally both of those things, it would have also been cruel.

Aziraphale doubted if Crowley would ever admit, even to himself, what exactly Aziraphale meant to him, but if that was what the demon needed to do to keep going, then Aziraphale wasn’t going to stand in his way.

So he kept his silence, but found that disentangling himself from Crowley’s affections proved harder in practise than theory. It seemed that every time he tried to pull away, Crowley just pulled him closer. And whenever reason fled Aziraphale and he just felt the impending end looming near, he broke down and accepted the demon’s comfort against his better judgment. It turned out that those times Aziraphale tried to distance himself were the times he needed Crowley most.

Looking at the demon now, sitting on their sofa in the unadorned silver mirror, Aziraphale wondered belatedly if keeping his true feelings from the demon had been such a good idea after all, because it didn’t look like he could have broken Crowley’s heart into more pieces if he’d tried.

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale’s fingertips ghosted over the surface of the mirror, tracing the line of Crowley’s cheek, and then turning and running down his shoulder.

Bert was there too, across the room talking to a bobby, and a third man wearing a dark, sombre suit was listening in, but Crowley wasn’t looking at any of them. His eyes were completely blank, staring off into the middle distance. As Aziraphale watched, a fresh tear rolled down Crowley’s already tear-slicked cheek, but the demon didn’t so much as blink, still staring off into that middle distance, a haunted, dead look in his eyes.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, knowing full well that the demon had no way of hearing him but feeling the need to tell him he was there anyway.

Aziraphale’s eyes fixed on the tears gleaming on Crowley’s cheeks, and knew that his friend had unFallen after all.

Crowley—an angel. Aziraphale knew it should have sounded preposterous, but it didn’t, not in the slightest. By the end, Crowley had cared for him so selflessly that only a fool would have thought his heart less than pure. It seemed…fitting. His Crowley, returned to divinity. Aziraphale had thought God had abandoned them, but it seemed that, somehow, He had accepted Crowley back, and for that the former angel was unspeakably grateful. The thought of Crowley returning to Hell and his demonic duties after Aziraphale’s death was a harsh one.

In the mirror, Bert had walked back to the sofa and was leaning over in front of Crowley, a hand on his shoulder as he tried to make eye contact. Bert was saying something—Aziraphale could see his lips moving—but the scrying spell didn’t carry the sound and Crowley didn’t seem to be listening anyway. Bert squeezed the unFallen angel’s shoulder, but Crowley didn’t respond, just swaying back and forth slightly, eyes unfocussed.

Aziraphale’s mouth thinned into a worried line. Bert patted Crowley’s shoulder and walked back to the other two men, gesturing to them that they should move outside.

Crowley just sat there, staring at nothing and crying silently, seemingly without even noticing that he was doing it. Aziraphale watched, transfixed, unable to tear his eyes away.

Bert came back in a little while later, accompanied by a young woman in a paramedic’s jacket. She started looking Crowley over, and Aziraphale, feeling a little ill, stood up and moved towards the rear of the bookshop, taking the mirror with him.

Aziraphale walked through the new door and into the cottage with the full intention of detouring to the kitchen to make a very strong pot of tea. The moment his eyes fell on the sofa, however, he rocked to a nervous halt.

Of course, the sofa looked in every sense entirely unremarkable, but it was supremely unsettling to look at it and know that, in this same place on the real Earth, Crowley was sitting there thinking that Aziraphale had left him forever.

Swallowing heavily, Aziraphale carefully laid the mirror on the arm of sofa and directed his feet to the kitchen. He pulled the kettle towards himself and began filling it with water from the tap, but halfway through his hand started shaking so badly he had to push the kettle back onto the counter before he splashed water everywhere.

Aziraphale pressed his palms into the edge of the counter and squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to keep his breathing even.

After a few long moments, he took a steadying breath and opened his eyes. His gaze went to the kettle and tracked automatically along its curved edge. He remembered Crowley gently pestering him for years about his insistence on buying the _oldest_ , most _decrepit_ kettle he could find in the entire village, instead of using an electric one like every other sane, tea-consuming individual had for the last eighty years.

Crowley had liked to tease him about things like that—all in good fun, of course—but he’d stopped after a while, when Aziraphale couldn’t remember having bought it in the first place.

The urge to make tea departing him as quickly as it had come, Aziraphale turned and quit the kitchen, sinking onto the sofa instead and picking up the mirror. In the polished surface, the paramedic had left and Crowley was no longer staring off into the middle distance. Instead, his head was in his hands and he was openly sobbing. Bert was sitting next to him in the exact same spot on the sofa where Aziraphale was sitting in Heaven, and he had a light arm around the former demon.

Either Crowley didn’t want Bert’s comfort or he didn’t even register that the barman was there, because just he curled more into himself, shoulders shaking.

Bert looked distressed as he rubbed Crowley’s back, and Aziraphale was suddenly intensely grateful that the barman was there, and that Crowley wasn’t alone right now.

Men Aziraphale didn’t know came to the door and knocked discreetly, and Bert came and went from the mirror’s view. Crowley stopped crying and went back to staring at the floor through his fingers, looking very pale.

Bert tried to get him to drink some water, and even tried tempting him with some tea, but Crowley remained non-responsive and eventually just listed sideways onto the sofa and fell asleep, despite the fact that it was the middle of the afternoon. Bert covered the unFallen angel with a blanket, wrote something on a sheet of paper, and left it on the corner of the kitchen table along with a glass of water. Then the barman sat down in Aziraphale’s armchair, put his feet up on the footrest, and started staring off into the distance himself.

In Heaven, Aziraphale sniffled and went to make a second attempt at that cup of tea.

 

~~***~~

 

The next day wasn’t much better.

Aziraphale sat on the sofa again, clutching the mirror in one hand and a very strong, very full cup of tea in the other.

Crowley was sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded on the wooden surface and head buried in his arms. Bert had made him another cup of tea, and this one sat nearby, just as cold and untouched as the first. The barman put a hand on Crowley’s shoulder and said something to him, but the unFallen angel just shook his head and tried to bury his face further in his arms. Bert finally swallowed heavily and left, leaving Crowley alone in the cottage.

“Just come to Heaven,” Aziraphale found himself whispering to the mirror, and the Crowley he couldn’t reach. “I’m here. I was human when I died. Think it through. It makes sense. I’m here. Come find me, my dear.”

The Crowley in the mirror slowly raised his head, and Aziraphale felt a flutter of irrational hope, grip tightening on the silver frame. “Crowley? Crowley? Can you hear me?”

But Crowley only stared off at nothing and then stood up, legs trembling slightly as he moved away from the table. The former demon stopped at the sofa and fell onto its length, curling up sideways and pressing his cheek against the material of the cushions, looking absolutely exhausted and miserable.

He stayed that way for several long minutes, and when Bert arrived again, raindrops glistening on the umbrella in his hand, he was wearing a dusty black suit and his hair was neatly combed. He tried to talk to Crowley, but the former demon just rolled over and refused to listen. Bert left again, and Aziraphale realised bleakly he must be going to the funeral. _His_ funeral.

On the sofa, Crowley curled up further and buried his head in the cushions.

Aziraphale found he had drained his cup of tea and went distractedly to pour himself another.

Crowley spent the better part of the next hour immobile on the sofa, but despite the lack of movement Aziraphale couldn’t find it in himself to set the mirror down. Crowley was grieving for _him_ , and setting that aside or attempting to forget it for even an instant seemed utterly unforgivable. _He_ had brought this on Crowley, after all, and as such _he_ did not get the luxury of looking the other way when the consequences came to call.

Some time later, Crowley stirred and carefully pushed himself off the sofa. The demon stumbled in the direction of the door and took a long moment to fight with his shoes. He was shaking rather badly, but after a few minutes the demon made it out of the cottage and into the rain.

“What are you doing, Crowley?” Aziraphale muttered worriedly to himself as Crowley started walking down the lane outside their cottage, but not in the direction of Midfarthing.

After a few minutes, he took a left and was now walking along the edge of a field, a row of trees on his left. The rainwater was streaming off the leaves in rivulets, but Crowley seemed to be making little effort to avoid them, only bothering to swat blindly at low-hanging branches in his path. He wasn’t stumbling as much now, and seemed to have a very specific destination in mind, feet swift on the uneven ground.

When the field ended, the former demon detoured from the path and arrived at a small, tucked-away little pond with a pier jutting out over its surface. Aziraphale didn’t recognise this area at all, but Crowley seemed familiar with it, striding forward quickly along the length of the wooden pier.

For a terrifying moment Aziraphale thought Crowley was going to throw himself in, but then the former demon just sat down on the end of the pier and looked out over the water. He was soon soaking, the rain sweeping around him in grey curtains and puddling in the wrinkles of his jacket, but Crowley didn’t seem to notice. He just sat there with his feet dangling out over the surface of the water, shoulders bowed, wearing the most lost, hopeless expression Aziraphale had ever seen.

The former angel reached out instinctively, but his fingers only bumped into the glass of the mirror. Aziraphale’s mouth twisted unhappily and he reached for his tea instead, reminding himself that he could only watch.

A couple of minutes later Crowley shivered, and then his wings unfurled into the physical plane behind him, shining even in the rainy twilight, as perfect and dazzlingly white as any angel’s.

Aziraphale’s eyes tracked again to the missing primaries, feeling the familiar pang of guilt. He was reaching for his tea again when there was a sharp knock at the cottage door.

The former angel jumped, knocking into the tea cup and splashing hot tea all over his hand. Aziraphale bit back a swear as he rescued the tea cup and wiped his hand distractedly on his trouser leg. The knock came again, sharp and demanding, and Aziraphale glanced at the door to the cottage.

“Either open this door, Fallen one,” came a no-nonsense voice from behind it, “Or it shall be broken down.”

Aziraphale felt his stomach drop, grip tightening simultaneously on the mirror. Heaven had found him. The angels he had killed during his rescue of Crowley were flashing before his eyes.

Aziraphale forced himself to his feet, fighting a sudden urge to flee. He might be able to hide among the roads and buildings of his imagined London outside the bookshop entrance, but he knew it would only be a matter of time.

He looked down at the mirror in his hand and drank in the last sight he’d probably ever have of his dearest friend. Then he stuffed the mirror under one of the sofa cushions and hurried towards the door.

“Azira—”

Aziraphale opened the door and took a quick step back, in case his visitor had smiting on their mind. Then he took a second, instinctive step back, because he recognised who it was.

A copper-skinned woman with curly black hair and eyes like flint stepped forward. She was wearing the standard uniform favoured by Heaven, but hers was ornamented with gold and silver. As she moved forward, two sets of white, shimmering wings unfolded behind her.

Aziraphale backed up further, feeling more than a little intimidated. “Azrael,” he breathed, and then added a hasty, “my lord.”

The archangel Azrael came to a stop just past the threshold and surveyed the small cottage with a level gaze, looking very much like a prince who’d stepped into a pauper’s house.

The feeling of being judged and found wanting rolled over Aziraphale, followed by a brief flicker of embarrassment, or perhaps guilt. Then that too was overcome by an irrational surge of protectiveness and pride; he would not allow the archangel to devalue in his mind this place that he loved, and that had been his and Crowley’s alone. He shifted unconsciously in front of the row of journals.

“Aziraphale,” Azrael said after a long moment, turning her clear gaze on the former principality.

The impression of being coldly studied under a microscope was intense, but Aziraphale held his ground and straightened up as far as he could. If he was to be executed for his crimes, he might as well go out with his chin up. He had done all this for Crowley, after all, and he wasn’t ashamed of that.

“I come to you personally as a favour to your former status,” Azrael said, voice still so level Aziraphale could have built a city on it. “The archangels have come to an agreement on what is to be done concerning you.”

Aziraphale swallowed, harbouring no delusions as to what that agreement might be.

Azrael folded her hands behind her back and took several steps into the cottage, walking towards the kitchen table. She stopped next to it and looked down, studying the scattering of post with apparent interest. Aziraphale’s gaze slid nervously to the empty cardboard box sitting nearby, from which he had retrieved the silver-framed mirror.

“Aziraphale,” Azrael said, picking up one of the pieces of post and turning the envelope over in her hand, “do you know who decides which souls go to Heaven and which to Lucifer?”

Aziraphale swallowed again, not sure if he dared answer incorrectly. “Our Father?” he hazarded.

“That’s right,” Azrael said, tapping the edge of the envelope against the surface of the table. “Not myself, as the archangel responsible for accommodating Heaven’s souls. Not the archangels as a whole, placed in charge of Creation while our Father is absent.” Azrael set the piece of post neatly back on the table where she’d found it. “Not even the Metatron or the other seraphim, with all of their power and authority.” Azrael paused and turned slightly, boots swivelling on the floor of the cottage with a slight scudding sound. “No, it is our Father who still presides over the placement of humanity’s souls.”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure where the archangel was going with this, but was starting to hope that, if she’d just been here to smite him, she wouldn’t be bothering to chat him up first.

Azrael moved past the table and skirted the back wall of the cottage, pausing to peer through the door into the Soho bookshop with apparent interest, hands again swept behind her back.

The archangel glanced back at him. “You are aware, I am sure, of our Father’s prolonged absence.”

Aziraphale nodded mutely.

“He has not...made His wishes very clear to the archangels on certain matters,” Azrael said slowly, in the tone of someone wishing to frame an unhappy situation in the best of light, “but there are some ways in which He still communicates His divine will.”

Azrael pursed her lips and moved past the doorway to the Soho bookshop, taking a moment to inspect the antique clock hanging on the wall next to it. Aziraphale tracked her movements carefully, feeling a sudden desire to keep her as far away from his and Crowley’s possessions as possible.

“One of those ways is by casting angels from His grace,” Azrael said calmly, still inspecting the clock, “and another is by dictating which souls shall enjoy Heaven for eternity and which shall be cast into the Pit.”

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably.

Azrael transferred her attention to one of the bookcases, addressing her next words to a line of neatly arranged books. “I imagine you can appreciate that this puts the archangels in a slightly...unusual position.” She turned, and this time she remained facing Aziraphale.

“Our Father saw fit to cast you away from His light for your crimes,” she said matter-of-factly, “but He did not see fit to send you into Lucifer’s shadow to walk as one of his Fallen angels.”

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that, so he just nodded uncertainly.

“But most peculiarly of all,” Azrael continued, “He rewarded the end of your mortal life with a spot in Paradise.”

Aziraphale felt his mouth twist in guilt. “I didn’t ask for one,” he said, “if that’s what you’re getting at.”

The archangel held up a hand. “It is no more your place to question the ineffable will of our Father than it is mine. He must have decided that you served your penance as a mortal well, and rewarded you thusly, as He saw fit. The archangels, myself included, will follow His direction in this manner.”

Aziraphale could barely believe his ears. Azrael was...letting him off scot-free?

Azrael seemed to notice Aziraphale’s giddy disbelief, because she gave him a slight smile, the first true emotion he had seen from her. “That is not to say that the archangels are pleased with you. On the contrary. I must stress that you remain here, and not cause any disruptions. The penalty for disobedience may be...severe.”

Aziraphale nodded hastily, feeling himself start breathing again. Azrael was going to let him go. Or, rather, Azrael was going to let him stay here, trapped…

Something else was occurring to Aziraphale, and he bit his lip, quickly weighing his options. “The—the demon,” he said cautiously, “he...unFell.”

Azrael nodded. “Yes.”

Aziraphale felt a quick wave of relief that he had guessed correctly in assuming that the returning to grace of a Fallen angel would be quickly noticed by the archangels. He hadn’t given anything away, then. “What...will become of him?” Aziraphale asked carefully.

The archangel gazed at him coolly. “It will depend on him. Our Father has again made His wishes known, but certain activities that have never been tolerated will remain that way.”

Aziraphale nodded hastily in agreement; white wings or no, he wouldn’t have expected the archangels to welcome an angel who acted like a demon.

Aziraphale hesitated as another thought occurred to him. “Will he be welcome in Heaven? As an angel?”

Azrael gave him a long look, one of her four wings twitching slightly. “That remains to be seen.”

Aziraphale nodded, and tried to inject as much gratitude as possible into the gesture. “Thank you,” he added.

Azrael nodded and started across the cottage towards the door. Aziraphale plucked up his courage and took a step forward, one last question on his mind.

“One more thing,” he said quickly, and Azrael stopped and turned. Aziraphale was quickly reminded that one false misstep might spell disaster, but he was willing to take that risk. “I don’t suppose,” he said quickly, “that, given the current angelic nature of the, er, once-Fallen demon, that it might be possible to, er, perhaps get a message to him?”

Aziraphale braced himself for an unpleasant response, but all Azrael said was, “That is not possible.”

Aziraphale let out a breath and nodded quickly before stepping away. “All right.”

Azrael frowned at him. “I trust you will remember what I have said. Do not step out of line, or we may be forced to relocate you somewhere...far less pleasant. Do you understand?”

Aziraphale nodded hastily. “Yes, yes, of course.” It was only centuries of disuse that stopped him from tacking a _my lord_ onto the end of his response.

Azrael nodded again, brusquely this time, and then turned and strode out of the cottage.

Aziraphale gave it a beat and then crept over to the door and watched as she spread her wings and climbed into the sky. She wasn’t very high up before she simply vanished as seamlessly as though she had never been there.

His hand still on the open door, Aziraphale let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He was safe. For now.


	3. Halfway

The moment Crowley set foot in that church, Aziraphale knew it was going to end poorly.

The recently unFallen angel had spent much of the morning staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom, where he’d fallen asleep curled up and fully dressed on top of the covers. When he finally jolted into motion, it was only to walk downstairs and head into the village without bothering to make himself breakfast or even brush off his rumpled suit jacket.

It looked to be absolutely scorching out, if the crinkled, browning leaves on the trees and heat mirages were anything to go by. Crowley must have been unbearably hot in his black suit, but he made no move to even take the jacket off. Instead, the former demon walked directly to his destination, head down, and didn’t miss a step.

When Aziraphale realised said destination was none other than the village cemetery, he had to stand up and pace around the cottage a couple of times to walk off a sudden excess of nervous energy. He retrieved the mirror and gazed down at it anxiously as Crowley started walking along the grass near the headstones, moving towards the newer graves.

He was going to visit Aziraphale.

For a long minute Aziraphale stood worriedly in the middle of the cottage, mirror in one hand and the back of the other rubbing against his cheek. Crowley was going to visit him.

_I ought to meet him there._

The thought was absurd, Aziraphale knew, but it tugged at him. He ought to meet Crowley there. He ought to meet him halfway. It was the least he could do.

Mind made up, Aziraphale walked quickly towards the door to the cottage, taking the mirror with him.

Bright sunlight greeted him, along with the balmy air of a perfect summer’s day. Aziraphale took a deep breath and exited the cottage, pulling the door closed behind him. His gaze dropped automatically to the flowerbeds on either side of the door, which were populated with a number of colourful varieties of tulips.

Then the angel’s gaze shifted to a particular patch of grass nearby. There was nothing about it marking it as any different than the rest of the lawn, but Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to tear his gaze away. He could remember the feeling of the lilies’ leaves brushing against his cheek as he stared up at the crystalline sky, chest heavy, but simultaneously there was an image in his head of Crowley embracing him. In this fleeting memory, Aziraphale was seeing both of them from some vantage point outside of his body, watching as Crowley buried his face in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck and pulled him closer. Aziraphale blinked at the lawn in confusion, and the secondary memory slowly faded from his mind.

A moment later, Aziraphale shook himself and continued walking down the drive, glancing at the mirror as he did so.

Crowley had reached his grave. He was standing a metre or so away, staring at the unadorned gravestone and the rectangular plot of freshly turned earth.

Aziraphale’s feet slowed, having only made it to the end of their drive. He spent a moment just gazing into the mirror in horror, eyes locked on the rectangular plot of earth. That was _him_ , buried six feet down. Crowley just stood there, expression unreadable.

Aziraphale swallowed. He had to meet Crowley halfway.

The former angel forced his feet into motion, walking along Somerset Lane and heading in the direction of the village proper, beyond which lay the little parish church and cemetery.

Aziraphale fell into a quick trot, fast enough that he would cover ground quickly but not so swiftly that he would tire before he arrived.

As he walked, he found himself looking between the mirror in his hand and his surroundings. In the mirror, Crowley hadn’t moved and didn’t look like he planned to for quite a while longer, just standing there motionless. Midfarthing, on the other hand, presented a new sight every time Aziraphale looked up.

Broadly speaking, the village looked just as he remembered leaving it. The houses were still neat and orderly, and the businesses were lined up along the main thoroughfare just as they’d always been. Despite himself, Aziraphale felt his pace slowing as he walked through the Midfarthing of his memory. Heaven really did know what it was doing.

The comfortable warmth of the sun on his shoulders felt real, for one thing, and so did the faint breeze that ghosted by every dozen metres or so. As he walked, his eyes trailed along familiar cars and hedges, and he even passed several of the villagers he knew by sight but not name. It was when he was walking past the intersection with the narrow little road that would have taken him to Walter Jamieson’s bank, where Crowley had worked for over a decade, that Aziraphale wondered distantly if he should stop at the cafe and talk to Harper. Or to Bert at the pub, for that matter.

Aziraphale tried to dismiss the notion immediately—he couldn’t let himself forget that this wasn’t _really_ Midfarthing, despite how tangible it looked and felt.

He was reminded forcefully of how real the Crowley in the bookshop had seemed.

Aziraphale turned his attention back to the mirror in his hand, picking up his pace. The Crowley standing in the cemetery was real, Aziraphale reminded himself forcefully. The only thing that was _real_ in this entire imagined village was what he saw in the mirror. Nothing else _mattered_.

Aziraphale kept telling himself that as he walked the length of the village and found himself trudging up the slight hill towards the parish church. Gravel crunched beneath his shoes, and somewhere a bird sang. In the mirror, Crowley had still not moved.

The cemetery spread out before him looked much like the one in the mirror, and Aziraphale traced Crowley’s earlier footsteps, walking past tombstone after tombstone. He only saw two with accompanying bundles of flowers.

Then Aziraphale matched up the scenery in the background of the mirror with what he was seeing in front of him, and looked past the frame to see...a neat, dark rectangular plot of earth. Aziraphale’s pace faltered, but he kept moving forward. He let the mirror sag in his hands as he came to a stop beside the edge of the plot, directly next to where Crowley was standing on Earth. The surface of the tombstone here was smooth and unmarked, but the absence of the dates and Aziraphale’s assumed name were the only differences.

For a long moment Aziraphale just stood there and looked down at the tombstone in surprise. His imagined Midfarthing even came with his very own grave. There was irony in there somewhere, Aziraphale felt certain, but he couldn’t find it. He shifted his gaze back to the mirror instead. Crowley looked like he was on the verge of tears, but otherwise hadn’t moved.

“I’m here, my dear,” Aziraphale said, the spoken words seeming entirely out of place. “I’m right next to you. I...I met you halfway.”

Crowley didn’t respond, and Aziraphale reflected soberly that his words were meaningless anyway. He hadn’t met Crowley halfway any more than Crowley had him; they were just as far apart as they’d been yesterday. Aziraphale was still trapped in Heaven, and Crowley was still tied to the Earth, albeit by ties of his own making.

Aziraphale swallowed heavily. He wanted to say something else, to talk to Crowley and pretend his friend could hear him, but he doubted he could say anything that wouldn’t just make him feel worse later.

So instead he just stood there, next to his own, imagined grave with the unmarked headstone, and stayed with Crowley as he grieved.

Crowley didn’t stray from the edge of the grave for hours, making no move to stretch, walk around, or even draw any nearer to the tombstone. He just stood there, face drawn, and looked down at Aziraphale’s grave.

After a time, Aziraphale realised with a surge of guilt that he was quite peckish. He roughly pushed the sensation aside—it was not his place to eat, not his place to enjoy the pleasant things in life, or indeed ever leave Crowley’s side. He would not do that to Crowley, not again.

The mirror grew heavy in his hands, but Aziraphale refused to set it down or rest it against something else, for even a moment.

It was solidly mid-afternoon when Crowley finally rasped in a breath a little larger than the others. Aziraphale didn’t notice at first, but when Crowley jolted into motion, walking swiftly away from the grave, Aziraphale scrambled to follow.

It was a bit odd, watching Crowley wind his way through the tombstones and up towards the church while Aziraphale matched his pace in his own imagined cemetery, trying not to trip, but he made it in the end.

In eighteen years of life in Midfarthing, Aziraphale had never once stepped foot in the little parish church.

This was not so strange in and of itself—in the light of his then-recent Fall, Aziraphale had had little interest in seeking the wisdom of his Father. What was strange was that Crowley, who to Aziraphale’s knowledge had never stepped foot in it either, was currently pulling the door open and walking in like he owned the place.

Aziraphale hesitated next to the door of the church in his heaven, looking down at the mirror as Crowley stepped inside. The interior of the church was relatively plainly furnished, as Protestant churches everywhere are wont to be, though a set of lovely stained glass windows lined the apse behind the altar.

Crowley walked down the central aisle and, after a moment’s deliberation, sat down in one of the pews near the front.

Aziraphale looked away from the mirror long enough to test the door of the church in front of him. It was unlocked, and Aziraphale slipped inside, hoping his imagined Father Gilbert wasn’t around anywhere to cause trouble. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if the annoying priest showed up and asked him to leave; Aziraphale was determined to follow Crowley anywhere he might go.

Soft coloured light streamed through the clerestory windows, filling the space with a sense of peace and the presence of divinity. Or, at least, the illusion of divinity.

Aziraphale strode silently up the aisle and slid into the wooden pew directly behind the one Crowley was sitting in. In the mirror, the unFallen angel was gazing up at the stained glass windows. Aziraphale ran a finger over the edge of the frame.

After a long moment, Crowley bowed his head and, to Aziraphale’s immense surprise, folded his hands. Was Crowley about to _pray?_ After six thousand years as a demon, cast from the grace and light of God, Crowley had walked into a church and started _praying?_ Had unFalling changed Crowley, or were these just the lengths Aziraphale’s death had pushed him to?

Aziraphale swallowed and looked up from the mirror, giving Crowley a bit of privacy. He looked along the closest side of the nave, watching the dust motes twirl in the air, rendered in brilliant hues by the stained glass. It truly was beautiful.

And perhaps it _was_ divine, in a way that maybe the same church on Earth wasn’t. This church was physically _in_ Heaven, and Aziraphale, at least, knew that their Father hadn’t completely betrayed them in the end. Azrael had been right, after all—only God had the power to decide where Aziraphale’s mortal soul went and, in the end, He had chosen Paradise over the Pit or oblivion. Aziraphale was still, improbably, very much intact, and somehow Crowley was too, even if the unFallen angel didn’t know it yet. Maybe that was worth something.

There was a blur of movement in the mirror, and Aziraphale looked down to see that Crowley had stood up, and his eyes were flashing. The former demon moved out from the pew into the central aisle, mouth working furiously.

Crowley was shouting something, the anger and distress clear on his face, but Aziraphale had never been any good at reading lips and the mirror was as silent as always. Crowley was addressing the altar, however, and Aziraphale’s chest tightened as he realised who Crowley must be shouting at. Who Crowley could only be shouting at.

There was a faint shimmer in the mirror, and then suddenly Crowley’s beautiful white wings were spread behind him. Crowley was shouting something else now, hands clenched into fists at his side. His eyes were red.

Crowley’s face twisted into a snarl as he advanced on the altar a few paces, gesturing at it forcefully, feathers bristling. He was furious, and even though Aziraphale was separated by a layer of glass, sheer distance, a plane, and all the guards and defences of Heaven, he could feel Crowley’s anger as palpably as though he were standing right next to him.

Crowley took a breath and turned slightly before rattling into another rant. Aziraphale tried to focus on his lips, hoping to pick up a phrase or two, but Crowley was speaking too quickly. The former demon’s gestures were easier to read: some measure of breadth, someone not in the room, God, us.

Crowley took another huge breath and jabbed his finger towards the side of the church. His eyes grew redder, shoulders shaking, and Aziraphale realised with a jolt that Crowley was talking about _him_ —gesturing to his grave. Crowley’s mouth ran off another line, but this one was faltering. He kept pausing, breathing heavily, and finally took a half-step forward and gestured emphatically to himself with both hands: _me_. And this time Aziraphale caught the last phrase from Crowley’s lips: _What do you want from me?_

Aziraphale tried to reach instinctively through the mirror, but again his fingers only touched glass. “My _dear_ ,” he admonished quietly, voice very loud in the silent church.

Crowley shook with what looked like an aborted sob, and for a moment Aziraphale thought he was done with his anger—hoped he was done.

His gorgeous white wings relaxed slightly, and in doing so the tip of his right wing brushed against one of the pews. In an instant Crowley had spun, grabbing onto the leading edge of his wing and pulling it towards him.

Aziraphale’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and then he felt his heart stop beating as Crowley yanked hard once, twice, and tore three of his beautiful white feathers out by the roots.

Aziraphale cried out, and Crowley did too, the unFallen angel’s mouth opening as tears streaked down his cheeks. His wing was shaking, drops of bright scarlet blood rolling down his remaining feathers, but Crowley only clenched his fist around the three feathers he’d torn out and cast them onto the floor of the church in front of him.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said in a mixture of shock and horror as Crowley glared up at the altar, trembling with anger.

The unFallen angel said something, pointing fiercely at the feathers and then gesturing sharply to the side.

And then Crowley reached back around to his wing and wrapped his hand around another pair of feathers.

“No,” Aziraphale said quickly, loudly, as though his words would have any impact on the horror unfolding in front of him. “No, no, Crowley, _don’t you dare—_ ”

Crowley tore the feathers out.

Aziraphale’s grip doubled on the mirror’s frame. A scene was unfolding in his head, a scene in which Crowley brutally tore out every last beautiful feather in some sort of protest against God until his wings were ravaged, bare, and bloodied, and all the while Aziraphale could only watch, useless and trapped.

 _But I’m here_ , Aziraphale thought wretchedly. _I’m in Heaven, Crowley; He hasn’t deserted you, hasn’t deserted_ us _, not completely. And you’ll need those wings, need them to fly to Heaven, oh, Crowley, stop, please_ —

Crowley was visibly shaking, blood staining his right wing as he switched his trembling stance and reached around for the other wing. His fingers wrapped around one of his few remaining primaries, and this time the images flashing across Aziraphale’s mind were of the disused armoury in Heaven, when Samkiel had moved aside and Aziraphale had finally laid eyes on Crowley. The demon’s beautiful ebony wings had been stretched out to their full span and viciously staked to the wall behind him, and every other primary had been torn out. The snapped ends of the thick quills had still been embedded in the bone in places, and when Aziraphale had laid his hand on Crowley’s wing the demon had shuddered violently, wing flexing weakly as fresh blood bubbled up, running over great dark stains and caked areas—

In the mirror, Crowley fell to his knees, hand grasping loosely at one of his coverts instead. He was shaking quite badly, tears streaking down his cheeks as he tugged at the feather.

Aziraphale’s cheeks were likewise slick and he didn’t know when it had happened, grip vice-like around the mirror’s frame.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and tore the feather out at a vicious angle. Aziraphale literally _watched_ the tremor pass through him as the unFallen angel threw the feather down on the floor with the others and reached back around for another.

“Please, Crowley, stop it,” Aziraphale whispered hoarsely to the mirror. “You’re hurting yourself, just... _please—_ ” His voice caught in his throat.

Crowley’s fingers wrapped around another victim and Aziraphale couldn’t bear to watch anymore. He turned his head away, incidentally looking at the exact same place in his imagined church where Crowley was deliberately replicating the state Heaven had once put him in.

Aziraphale blinked away the wetness in his eyes and looked back at the mirror. Crowley hadn’t ripped the feather out yet, and instead he was running a nervous finger over its shining length, expression wretched. Finally, Crowley moved his hand from his wing to the pile of feathers scattered in front of him, grabbing at the topmost one.

Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and said something. He seemed quieter now, all the fight gone out of him, and Aziraphale could see the breath catch in his chest between every couple of phrases. Aziraphale made out a few words: _Please...I don’t want them._

Crowley bowed his head and just sat there for a long moment, shivering as blood rolled down his damaged feathers. Aziraphale’s fingertips ghosted over the image of Crowley in the mirror, heart tight in his chest. He remembered Azrael’s words, _it is no more your place to question the ineffable will of our Father than it is mine_ , and wondered if those would have been better addressed to Crowley.

In the mirror, Crowley took a deep breath and staggered to his feet. His wings expanded slightly and Aziraphale was relieved when Crowley miracled the blood off his feathers and tucked them out of view.

Crowley said something else to the altar, rather sharply, and then turned and walked back down the aisle. He pushed the door open and strode out into the sunlight.

Aziraphale set the mirror down for a moment, staring up at the stained glass windows in his imagined church, breathing deeply. The colourful light was still filling the space with that divine aura, the peaceful atmosphere in sharp contrast to the events that had just taken place. It seemed hopeless, but Aziraphale sent up a small prayer of his own, just in case.

“Please...look after him. If You care about me enough to send me up here, and to unFall him...please. He...he needs...”

 _He needs me_ , Aziraphale completed silently. He swallowed and looked down at the mirror in his lap. Crowley was standing next to his grave again, a bunch of white feathers lax in his hand, looking very much like he wanted to crawl into the earth with Aziraphale.

Aziraphale swallowed again and looked back up at the altar and the shining stained glass windows. He mustered every ounce of faith he still had, every last scrap of assurance in the divine that he had possessed as a doubtless angel, back when the world was new.

“He needs someone. To—to look after him. If You are at all still a God of love, as You once were...”

 _Send him to me_ , Aziraphale wanted to ask. _Let him know I’m here_.

Instead, he said, “Don’t...let him be alone. Don’t let him...tear himself apart because of me.”

Aziraphale dropped his gaze from the stained glass to the pew in front of him, where so recently and so far away Crowley had sat and said a prayer of his own.

“Just...look after him,” Aziraphale finished. “That is all I ask.”

Aziraphale remembered the wetness on his cheeks and wiped it away with the back of his hand. Sniffling, he stood up and walked down the nave, back towards the door.

Once outside in the relaxing warmth of his imagined day, Aziraphale stopped and looked back down at the mirror. To his surprise, it was no longer showing Crowley. Instead, of all people, it was showing _Father Gilbert_.

The priest was standing by the door to the church, not a metre from where Aziraphale was currently looking down at the mirror in confusion.

Father Gilbert reached out a hand and patted the stone wall of the church, almost fondly. He said something to its weathered surface, words as muted as Crowley’s had been. Then the priest turned his head until, impossibly, it seemed that he was looking straight at Aziraphale, directly through the mirror.

The priest tapped his fingers against the stone wall and gave Aziraphale—or, rather, he gave the space Aziraphale was currently occupying, on Earth—a wan, kind smile.

And then, he _winked_.

Aziraphale stared at him, flabbergasted, but at that moment the image in the mirror shimmered and cleared to show Crowley already striding down the road, walking swiftly away from the cemetery with the back of one hand pressed against his mouth.

Aziraphale didn’t know what had just happened with Father Gilbert, but maybe it had been some weird glitch in the spell on the mirror. Someone else must have been standing outside the church on Earth, about where Aziraphale had been standing in Heaven, and that’s who Father Gilbert had been talking to. Yes, that must be it.

The former angel looked back down at the mirror, feeling his interest in the matter fading quickly. Crowley was passing through the very short stretch of road with the handful of Midfarthing’s businesses lined up along it, and, though someone stopped and tried to talk to him, he just walked faster, head down.

Aziraphale looked up again, gazing around the cemetery bleakly. And then, slowly, he started down the hill himself.

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale needed a drink.

That’s what he decided as he made a beeline for the pub, deviating from the path Crowley had taken in the mirror. He no longer cared that the pub or, indeed, any of its drinks were imagined—he’d take whatever form of alcohol he could get.

The pub was reassuringly familiar, the weight of the door solid against his hand as he entered. It was still mid-afternoon, too late for the lunch crowd and too early for those getting off work. The space had that same, contradictory combination of aged dust and highly polished dark wood that it had possessed when Aziraphale first stepped foot in it, eighteen years ago.

Despite the hour, there were a handful of people sitting at tables or at the bar, most of whom appeared to belong to a family on holiday. The telly in the corner was playing a football match on mute, but it must have been an international game because no one was paying it any heed.

Aziraphale moved past them to the bar, relieved to see Bert sorting through some cutlery near one end.

The barman looked up as Aziraphale approached, giving him a broad grin.

“Ziraphale! What can I get you for?”

“Something strong,” Aziraphale said shortly, sliding onto one of the stools.

Bert’s face grew concerned as he got a better look at the Fallen angel. “Say, are you all right? You seem a little—”

“I’m fine,” Aziraphale interrupted, and then caught himself. He sighed heavily. “Sorry.” He massaged the bridge of his nose.

“Are you sure?” Bert asked.

Aziraphale half-glanced down at the mirror in his lap and then set it on the polished surface of the bar, facedown. He propped his elbows up on the bar next to it and ran both palms over his closed eyes, fingers catching in his hair. “Yes. Just—I need a drink.”

This seemed to get Bert moving, at least—he shuffled off down the bar a little ways and, after a moment’s thought, selected one of the glass bottles lining the wall behind him.

Aziraphale kept rubbing his eyes until he saw grey spirals kaleidoscoping in front of him, and then dropped his hands onto the bar. He could still see Crowley ripping his feathers out, still see the way his friend had collapsed to the floor, wings ravaged, and made a desperate, hopeless supplication to their long-absent Father.

Bert returned, setting a glass in front of him and filling it with amber-coloured liquid from the bottle in his hand. “Is there anything I can do?” the barman asked, trying to catch Aziraphale’s eye.

Aziraphale let him, and Bert seemed perfectly serious, the honesty plain on his face. He could tell the barman just wanted to help. Bert always did.

The former angel gave him a tight, forced smile and sat back. “I’m afraid not. Maybe you could have, once...but you're not exactly real, I’m afraid.”

Aziraphale picked up the glass and tasted its contents—single malt scotch, and a very fine one at that.

Bert seemed unfazed by Aziraphale’s words. He pressed his palms flat against the edge of the bar. “That doesn’t mean I can’t help,” he pointed out. He considered for a moment. “I can’t help _him_ , maybe, but I can certainly help you.”

It was entirely clear who Bert was referring to. He was just a projection of Aziraphale’s subconscious, after all.

The corner of Aziraphale’s mouth twisted up, and he took a longer drink of scotch, the alcohol going down warm and sharp. It certainly tasted _like_ proper alcohol, but in some unidentifiable dimension it seemed to be falling short—not quite full enough of flavour, perhaps. When Aziraphale set the glass down again, Bert hadn’t moved and was still looking at him with that open, helpful expression.

Aziraphale wondered absently if he was being so supportive because Aziraphale liked him that way, or because Heaven had built safeguards into the system to keep the souls of the dead happy.

“So now you can see him, but what good is that going to do you?” Bert asked gently, nodding his head towards the mirror lying facedown on the bar. Aziraphale fought the urge to casually move one of his elbows onto it.

“You’re here,” Bert continued, “and he’s there. It’s unfortunate, but I’m afraid that’s the way it is.”

“That’s the way it is _now_ ,” Aziraphale corrected. He dropped his gaze to the scotch and half-heartedly swirled it around a little. “He’ll realise what happened, where I am.”

Bert raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“He’ll figure it out and come to Heaven,” Aziraphale continued, though the conviction in his voice could have been stronger. “It might take him some time, but he’ll figure it out. He always does. He’s cleverer than you give him credit for.”

Aziraphale realised belatedly the pointlessness of that last sentence, but reflected that it was probably still true—he had a bad habit of selling the demon short.

“Maybe,” Bert allowed. “But how long will that take? Days? Weeks? Years?”

Aziraphale’s throat closed at the possibility of the latter and he sat back, hiding his distress behind another sip of scotch. “Crowley’s an angel now,” he asserted in as strong of a voice as he could muster, “and He wouldn’t have made him one if He wasn’t planning on having him come to Heaven.”

Aziraphale’s grip tightened on the glass and he looked down again. “It might—it might even take him getting discorporated first, and then when he’s up here he’ll put it together. It might take some time, but...he’ll come. I know he will.” Aziraphale swallowed. “He has to.” There were pinpricks at the corners of Aziraphale’s eyes, but he sniffed and told himself it was the scotch.

Bert’s expression softened. “He really doesn’t,” he said kindly. “He might be grieving you now, but how long will that go on for? He’ll get over you sooner or later, and then, why would he want to hang around in Heaven? Don’t you remember what they did to him here? He won’t want to stay within Heaven’s reach any longer than he has to. And you know how much he loves the Earth. What makes you think he’d want to give all that up to stay here with you?”

The pinpricks were growing stronger, and Aziraphale scrubbed at them irritably with the back of one hand. “I thought you were supposed to be helpful,” he muttered. “Trying to cheer me up or something.”

“I _am_ being helpful,” Bert pressed. “And you know it.” He laid a hand on the mirror, and this time Aziraphale really did move towards it, wrapping his hand protectively around its silver frame. Bert tapped his fingers on its brown-papered back.

“This is only going to bring you more sorrow,” he said. “That’s all it’s done so far, and that’s all it will continue to do. Give this up now and enjoy your paradise, that’s all I’m saying.”

Bert removed his hand and started rearranging something underneath the bar. “Keeping false hope alive is only going to be more damaging in the long run. You’re just gearing yourself up for disappointment.”

Aziraphale fixed his gaze on the scotch’s amber depths.

“And you know I’m right, deep down,” Bert continued in that open, honest tone, “otherwise I’d just be serving drinks.” Bert leaned over to top off Aziraphale’s scotch, as though emphasising his point.

Aziraphale took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax his death grip on the mirror’s frame. He knew the barman was right, and hated that he was. But though Bert could call this heaven a paradise all he liked, that didn’t stop it from feeling increasingly like a cage.

The barman sighed and set down the bottle. He adopted a gentler tone. “Look, you and I both know this can only end in tragedy, so why keep on this path? He’s beyond your reach, so stop reaching for him.”

Aziraphale’s fingers tightened reflexively around the frame of the mirror.

Bert picked the bottle up again and returned it to its shelf. “I’m here to help, that’s all, but this really is not the road to happiness—”

“No,” Aziraphale interrupted, looking down at the back of the mirror. Something had just occurred to him.

Bert paused. “Sorry?”

Aziraphale looked up, and his voice was stronger. “No, he’s not beyond my reach. Just _look_ at this mirror.” He tapped his fingers against its back, caught in a sudden stroke of realisation. “I made this using _an actual spell_ from a book from a collection I prize so highly Heaven took it upon itself to reproduce it for me, page by page.”

Aziraphale pointed at the mirror again, excitement shooting through him as he realised the ramifications of what he was saying. “I can perform actual _magic_ , I have access to actual _spells_ , and the knowledge of an _angel_. I’m in _Heaven_. I know where I am, I know where Crowley is, and I know how to get from here to there.”

Aziraphale stood up, sliding the mirror off the bar as he did so and tucking it under his arm. “I am not your ordinary departed human soul, and I refuse to sit here and be treated like one. I was a _cherub of God_ once, and a principality not so very long ago. I’ve been a scholar since before scholars were invented; I’ve spoken with all of the greatest philosophers and problem-solvers in all of human history, and I’ll be damned if I can’t think my way out of this.”

Bert blinked at him in surprise.

“Crowley thinks I’m gone,” Aziraphale said, the statement hard to form on his tongue, “but I’m _not_ gone. And if he’s having trouble figuring that out by himself, then I’ll just have to find some way to tell him.”


	4. A Tale of Two Bookshops

Crowley was reading a slim black journal.

Aziraphale slowed to a stop when he saw that was what it was, surprise flooding through him. It didn’t bother him that Crowley was reading it—that was rather the point of having written them—it was just that he vividly remembered having burned them.

It took him a long couple of minutes to realise that this one must have escaped the flames somehow—he was certain he _had_ burned at least the majority of them, and there was no other feasible way for Crowley to have got ahold of one.

He would have liked to think that this was a godsend, perhaps literally—Aziraphale _had_ intended the journals as a comfort to the demon, after all—but Crowley didn’t seem to be taking it that way at all.

For one thing, he wouldn’t stop crying. His hands were shaking so badly Aziraphale didn’t know how he even managed to read the pages in front of him, tears spilling unchecked down his cheeks. His eyes, nose, and cheeks were bright red, and he didn’t look like he planned on calming down anytime soon. He’d even miracled up a box of tissues and a rapidly-filling rubbish bin, but they didn’t seem to be helping much.

For another, he kept draining the wine bottle sitting next to him on the desk. Aziraphale recognised it immediately as the same vintage he and Crowley had shared on the last handful of Christmases. That alone made Aziraphale’s hands tighten on the edge of the mirror—Crowley drinking it now implied that he believed there would be no more shared Christmases to keep it for.

Looking at Crowley now, Aziraphale felt a pang of regret for having ever written the blasted journals in the first place. If he’d known they’d have this effect, he’d have never set pen to paper.

He had not meant to make Crowley cry. Even when he’d thought Crowley incapable of shedding tears, he had not meant to bring Crowley sorrow. He’d wanted to level with the demon, certainly, in a way that he hadn’t been able to in life, but more importantly he’d wanted to leave Crowley with something to remember him by. Aziraphale’s own memory had been failing in a manner completely out of his ability to control, and he had never wanted Crowley to feel that way.

In the mirror, Crowley set the journal down for a moment to rest his forehead on the heel of his supporting hand and sob. The motion racked his shoulders, and Crowley grabbed at his side as the breath rattled out of him.

Aziraphale, feeling sick to his stomach, set the mirror down on the table in his Soho bookshop.

“Hang on, Crowley,” he implored, trying to keep his voice level. “Just—hang on.”

Forcing himself to leave the mirror on the table where it would limit its ability to distract him, Aziraphale turned to his books.

Starting at one end of the shop, he began methodically skimming through the titles, picking out anything that looked like it might be remotely helpful. The only spell he could think of off the top of his head for transmitting a message from Heaven to Earth were those used by Gabriel and, on occasion, the Metatron. Spellwork had never been Aziraphale’s most avid area of interest, though he recalled several books that might be of use.

By the time he had combed through the entirety of the bookshop, he had amassed a small mountain of books on the table—everything from spellwork manuals to books on the subject of Heaven, several of which had been penned by fellow angels.

Only once he had settled himself at the table with a piece of paper and a pen did he allow himself to glance again at the mirror.

Crowley still had the journal open on his lap, one hand hugging the wine bottle against his side as he looked bleakly down at the pages.

Aziraphale swallowed and pulled the nearest book closer, diverting his attention to its neat blackletter script. The best way to help Crowley, he told himself, was to get a message to him.

As Aziraphale flipped through the book, navigating to the particular sigil he had in mind, he entertained himself with thoughts of performing the appropriate spell. Crowley would pause in his reading of the journal, maybe sniffle a little in surprise, and then he would look up as a shaft of heavenly light fell into their cottage. Crowley might recoil at first, as his demonic instincts kicked in, but then Aziraphale would tell him it was all right, his voice transmitted down to Earth on the shaft of light. Crowley would gasp with relief, and finally he would stop crying and set the bottle aside. Aziraphale would explain to him what had happened and where he was, and Crowley would say he’d be right up. Maybe he’d crack a joke or two about how he’d really thought Aziraphale was dead this time. Aziraphale wouldn’t even have time to put all the books away before Crowley arrived, barging through the cottage door like usual, and all would be right with the world.

 _And then, why would he want to hang around in Heaven?_ Bert’s words rang in his head, unbidden. _Don’t you remember what they did to him here?_

“Everything will be okay,” Aziraphale muttered to himself, turning the next page in the book with a little more speed than strictly necessary. “He’ll be okay.”

 _You know how much he loves the Earth_ , the memory of Bert continued, in that sensible tone. _What makes you think he’d want to stay here with you?_

Aziraphale turned to the next spread and ran a hand over one of the pages, glancing at the mirror again. Crowley was taking a sloppy drink from the bottle, spilling some in the process. He didn’t seem to notice.

Aziraphale turned back to the book. “Even if he doesn’t want to stay,” he told himself quietly, “at least he’ll be okay.”

Aziraphale kept turning the pages in the book, and told himself that it would all be worth it if the Crowley in the mirror just stopped sobbing.

 

~~***~~

 

In the third book, Aziraphale found what he was looking for. The book, titled _Major Sigils of the Seven Heavens_ , laid out the primary major sigils used throughout Heaven, complete with diagrams. The sigil he was looking for was helpfully filed in the section on the fourth heaven, which was under Gabriel’s jurisdiction as archangel in charge of communications.

Specifically, the sigil allowed the caster to broadcast audio to any location within the “predetermined ambit.” That last phrase was somewhat troubling—how was he to know if the “predetermined” range of the spell included Earth? As he read further, Aziraphale felt his spirits sinking.

As it turned out, the ambit of the spell was determined by a rather extensive system of sigils and glyphs that the author of the book had decided weren’t important enough to reproduce. Since the author apparently assumed that the reader would be an angel working in the fourth heaven under Gabriel, this made perfect sense, as the sigils and glyphs in question were already permanently arranged there. In that way, it was a little like a manual for radio broadcasters, which assumes that you already have access to a working broadcast tower and a way to send signals to it. The good news was that that ambit necessarily included the Earth, since that was the primary way Heaven contacted field agents.

Aziraphale read the entire chapter and then shifted his gaze to the door of the bookshop, drumming his fingers nervously against the surface of the table. He knew that the personal heavens of departed souls were located in the third heaven, but he doubted that was close enough to Gabriel’s set-up in the fourth to be able to use his “predetermined ambit.”

That wasn’t the only hitch in his plan, though. Crowley was in Midfarthing, which Adam had explicitly shielded from Heaven for this very reason. It was therefore extremely unlikely that, even if Aziraphale were able to somehow broadcast a message from Gabriel’s communications centre, Crowley would be able to receive it.

He could always bypass that by using a middleman, though—Newt or Anathema would certainly be very surprised if a shaft of light descended in front of them and gave them some hasty instructions, but they’d likely be able to get a message to Crowley.

But that was assuming Aziraphale would be able to get to the communications centre and broadcast a message. The broadcasting itself was another big _if:_ it was rather unlikely that Aziraphale would be able to single-handedly operate the broadcasting sigil.

The thing about written magic is that it comes in many forms. Of these forms, sigils and glyphs are the most common, with glyphs generally comprising and honing the focus of the more powerful sigils.

Sigils, meanwhile, come in two classes of their own. Minor sigils can be performed by anyone, even humans, and draw their power from the intrinsic nature of the sigil and any glyphs comprising it. Witches use these often, and it was a minor sigil that Aziraphale had used to create his scrying mirror.

Major sigils, on the other hand, draw their power from the caster, which means by definition that they can only be used by angels or demons, with very few exceptions. They draw on the same well of power used for performing miracles, which are basically the willed or spoken equivalent of sigils. The advantage of sigils over willed miracles being that, much like maths, there’s only so much you can do in your head before you have to write something down.

As Aziraphale looked down at the sigil carefully reproduced in the book in front of him, he reflected that he would likely never be able to perform it. It was clearly a major sigil—if the name of the book hadn’t given it away, the double ring around the edge of the bounding circle in the diagram would have spoken clearly enough—and Aziraphale had no reason to believe he was anything other than completely human anymore.

Aziraphale read the entire chapter again, just in case he had missed something, but it did not appear to be the case. Sighing, he made a note of the page and set the book aside. Maybe there was a minor sigil somewhere that he could use, the broadcasting equivalent of the one he had used for the mirror?

Thoughts again straying to Crowley, Aziraphale felt his gaze drawn to the silver-framed mirror. Crowley appeared to be about halfway through the journal now, hands clamped tight to the sides as he looked down at it, tears still streaking down his face.

Aziraphale’s mouth drew into a line as he pulled the next book towards himself.

 

~~***~~

 

By the time Crowley finished reading the journal, Aziraphale had amassed a sizeable stack of useless books near his right elbow. The Fallen angel had been keeping an eye on Crowley as he neared the end of the journal, glancing nervously between his friend and whatever text was in front of him.

When Crowley finally turned the last page of the journal, he spent an impossible forever just staring down at it, as though he couldn’t process that he had reached the end. He was trembling a little, and Aziraphale momentarily abandoned his interest in the book in front of him to place a hand on the corner of the mirror.

Finally, Crowley folded the journal closed and spent another short eternity staring at the back cover. Then he took another swig from the ever-present wine bottle and, somewhat to Aziraphale’s horror, turned back to the beginning of the journal.

“Oh, Crowley, my dear, don’t—” Aziraphale bit his lip in worry. He had been hoping Crowley would take some time to sleep or otherwise look after himself, leaving Aziraphale alone to burn the midnight oil and hopefully find a solution before Crowley put himself through too much more pain.

The memory of the church was still vivid in his mind, and he fully intended on finding a way to get a message to Crowley before the unFallen angel had any more similar inclinations.

But Aziraphale’s wishes went unheeded, and soon he forced his attention back to the volume in front of him.

He could find nothing useful in that book, or the one after it, or the one after that. He had a couple brief moments of hope in a book entitled _Minor Sigils and Their Uses_ , and another called _Humane Magickes of the Spheres_ , but neither held up under even moderate scrutiny. Even the book he’d taken the mirror sigil from wasn’t much help; it turned out that scrying and broadcasting messages were two very different things. The main difference was that broadcasting pretty much anything—sound, an image—necessitated some manner of broadcasting system that Aziraphale simply did not possess.

When he was over halfway through the pile, Aziraphale took a moment to reassess the problem. If he couldn’t find a minor sigil capable of somehow getting a message to Crowley or Newt and Anathema, he might have to sidestep sigils altogether.

He could take a message personally, of course, but that seemed just as impossible of an endeavour as somehow finding a way to work a major sigil without any powers. Just escaping the confines of Azrael’s domain would be a feat in and of itself, if he had even the faintest idea how to do it. And if he somehow managed to escape from under Azrael’s watchful eye, he’d have to reach one of the inner edges of Heaven and—what? He could hardly fly down to Earth, and had already Fallen. And even if, by some string of miracles, he managed to get to Earth in one piece and find Crowley, he’d still be trapped in the ethereal plane. He’d be literally a ghost, stranded without a corporation or physical body. But he’d be caught by Jophiel’s guards long before he got that far, anyway.

So maybe a more plausible course was to find someone else to carry a message for him. He doubted he had very many angelic friends left—once upon a time, he might have been able to convince Malachi to carry a coded message to someone he actually trusted with Crowley’s location, like Newt or Anathema, but...well. That ship had rather sailed when Aziraphale had run him through while in the process of saving Crowley in the first place. Between the deaths of his brothers and his own Fall, Aziraphale severely doubted there was anyone left in Heaven inclined to do him any favours. And even if there were, he’d have to still find his way out of the labyrinth of individual heavens to track down said angel.

Aziraphale frowned down at the book in front of him. In that regard, actually, he might have a chance. If anything good had come out of his rescue of Crowley from Heaven—besides the liberation of Crowley, of course, which was a very large “besides”—it was that Aziraphale had become extremely familiar with the exact layout of whole swaths of Heaven.

After setting up a safe house to hide away in upon their return to Earth—a safe house they were destined to never use—Aziraphale had studiously planned and then meticulously executed what he was inclined to think had been a pretty damn good rescue.

They’d been holding Crowley near the edge of the second heaven, and Aziraphale had plotted a number of careful routes from the disused armoury where he was being kept to the least-guarded edges of Heaven. The closest route had been one that ended in the third heaven, conveniently located over northern Europe.

The plan had gone rather awry from there, despite all of Aziraphale’s precautions, but the fact remained that Aziraphale had already, in a sense, done a lot of the necessary research for an excursion into and out of Heaven while pursued and potentially incapacitated.

Aziraphale had gone so far as to bribe Heaven’s librarian for a look at some of the most accurate maps of Heaven, and had even surreptitiously duplicated them—

Aziraphale stood up abruptly, knocking his chair back with a short scrape as his mind jumped to the adult bookshop across the street from his own Soho bookshop.

He’d planned the incursion into Heaven from the safe house, of course, but before he’d gone up to Heaven for the final time he’d taken the precaution of hiding all of the plans and materials he’d gathered. The safe house was only useful, after all, if Aziraphale were able to return to it, which was not a given. It was likely his bookshop, however, would be under constant surveillance, so he’d entrusted Heaven’s greatest secrets to the one person who had proved his loyalty time and time again in any number of sticky situations, and who was the very last person Heaven would suspect him of being in cahoots with: the rather pungent owner of the adult bookshop across the street.

It turned out being the owner of a Soho bookshop of any description kindled a sort of kindred spirit.

In any case, Aziraphale had left sensitive information and material with him time and time again, including messages to Crowley when he felt other channels could not be trusted. In this case, he had discreetly posted the maps detailing the exact layout of Heaven to him and asked him to keep ahold of them for him. They had an agreement of sorts, of which Aziraphale’s end mainly consisted of keeping the police and other undesirables away from his shop on occasion.

And if Heaven was really as good as its word when it came to recreating the world of the departed soul as he or she remembered it—

Aziraphale was pushing open the door to his bookshop before he’d even finished his thought, striding out into the perennial sunshine of what could only be an imagined day in London. He stepped around the Bentley, which Not-Crowley had left parked in front of the bookshop before he’d vanished, and crossed the street.

The door of the adult bookshop protested with a slight squeak as Aziraphale strode in. He had no sooner stepped foot inside than he rocked to a surprised halt.

His memories of the adult bookshop were...suffice it to say, _markedly different_ than what was currently greeting him.

Belatedly, Aziraphale remembered that the system the individual heavens were all in had a tendency to alter things the soul in question wasn’t particularly fond of—airbrushing over the unpleasant details, if you will, to create something more likely to bring them happiness. Not-Crowley obeying the traffic laws, for one thing, or the fact that Aziraphale’s journals were still lined up on his bookshelf instead of smouldering in the fireplace. Little things like that.

And, it appeared, some not-so-little things in other areas.

For one thing, Aziraphale had never seen the place so _clean_.

The funky smell was gone, as were the unidentifiable stains and the dim lighting. The grime had been scrubbed out of every available surface and, if anything, there was a faint smell of something like cream cake. Queen’s “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy” was playing on the sound system.

Gone were the provocative covers of the magazines and the DVDs in suspiciously-smudged holders. Instead, the magazine covers displayed such tantalising images as a troupe of kittens rolling around in a bed of gleaming white and black feathers, Zenodotos of Ephesus holding a scroll in one hand and a plate of sushi in the other, and a handsome black serpent wrapped around a cup of absolutely delicious-looking tea. A large poster plastered on the wall beside the rack of magazines showed a stylised illustration of a man in a sharp suit wearing sunglasses leaning against a shining black vintage car. There was an easy smile on his face, and he was holding a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.

Aziraphale dragged his eyes away, feeling a flush cross his cheeks, and took a couple hasty steps further into the shop. His eyes fell this time on a nearby table stacked with large-format books. Their glossy covers showed beautiful photographs of the Basilique Notre Dame in Montreal, the Carina Nebula, and the Ritz. Aziraphale’s fingers physically itched to open one with a cover showing the Biblioteca Joanina at the University of Coimbra.

Situated slightly above them was a picnic basket perfect for taking to St James’s and a row of gorgeous Regency silver snuffboxes. Aziraphale felt his heart actually tighten a few notches at the sight, and it was with a great struggle that he forced himself to keep walking. It was simply impossible to ignore the slightly under life-size white marble statue that caught his eye next, though, try as he might.

It showed two figures, a winged one catching the other as he listed backwards. The figure on the verge of collapse was a soldier of some kind, as evidenced by the round shield strapped to his arm, and appeared to have just been slain in battle. The figure holding him up was kissing him gently on the forehead, and her beautiful marble wings stretched up behind her, feathers flared. The tenderness in her expression was exquisite, and the laxness of the fallen soldier’s muscles so perfectly sculpted that it seemed they were simply caught in that instant forever, time suspended around them. As Aziraphale swallowed and forced himself to keep walking, he couldn’t help but notice that the emblem on the slain soldier’s shield was that of a serpent wrapped around a tree.

Aziraphale was both simultaneously relieved and disappointed to find that he had successfully reached the counter, and he rapped on its meticulously clean Perspex surface without further ado.

“Er, Nigel?” he called, a little uncertainly. “Anyone about?”

There was a faint clattering noise, and a voice said something that sounded like, “One moment!”

Aziraphale drummed his fingers on the counter, actually allowing himself to look at the items perched atop it for the first time—usually when he was here he did his best to try to not look at anything in particular for too long. There was an impressive selection of tiny cakes and sandwiches to his immediate left, exactly like the ones served at the Ritz. To his right were a couple of stuffed duck toys and a cup filled with that one _very particular_ type of pen that Aziraphale knew worked better than all the others. There was a sign that said, “Free—take one.”

Aziraphale’s willpower really did fail him this time, and he pocketed one. They were hard to find, these pens. While he was at it, he ate one of the tiny cakes too.

A stand of postcards was propped up near the register, and Aziraphale choked on the cake briefly when he locked eyes with Crowley. The former demon was sitting at a table with a couple of candles and a rose lying on it, looking directly out of the glossy surface of the postcard at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale forced the cream cake down and quickly focussed his gaze on a bit of utterly unremarkable floor behind the counter. _“Nigel?”_ he called again, a little desperately.

Right on cue, there was a swish of fabric as the scruffy-bearded, uncomfortably-scrawny Nigel Graves pushed his way past the edge of a tapestry where Aziraphale was certain there had once been a rather disgusting-looking beaded curtain.

Though he still had a generally unclean look about him, Nigel looked a sight more respectable than his usual, slightly paedophilic appearance. His hair was pulled back into a hipster-esque bun and looked like it had recently seen a shower and some product—which was practically unheard of where Nigel was concerned—and he was wearing a t-shirt with a stack of horizontal stripes of purple, white, grey, and black.

Nigel lit up when he saw who it was. “Well, if it ain’t Ezra Fell!” He lowered his voice and glanced conspiratorially around the shop, even though it was empty apart from them. “You need something, mate?”

“Er,” said Aziraphale. Nigel smelled quite a bit like soap, and it was a disconcerting departure from his usual, let’s say rosy, stench.

“Actually,” Aziraphale said, remembering a bit belatedly what he had come here for, “yes. I posted some things to you a while ago? Asked you to hang onto them since I might be, er, indisposed for a time?”

Nigel nodded, the movement making the bun at the back of his head bob up and down. “Yeah, I get you. I’ll just be a tick, yeah?” With that, he tapped Aziraphale on the back of the hand and vanished back behind the tapestry. Aziraphale didn’t feel the usual overwhelming desire to wipe the back of his hand on his trouser leg, but he did so anyway, just to be on the safe side.

While Nigel was gone, Aziraphale kept his gaze firmly on the wall behind the counter. It had once featured pin-ups of centrefolds, but now it was a mural of a dragon. It was a beautiful mural, to be certain, painted mostly in shades of grey and the same purple Nigel had been wearing. The dragon was wrapped around itself in a style familiar to fans of rock bands everywhere, and was holding in one of its claws what looked like an ace of hearts from a deck of playing cards, the splash of red standing out brightly from the cooler colours. Its other claw was snagged around a banner, which read ‘I’LL TAKE THE CAKE.’ Inexplicably, its slitted eyes were the exact same gold shade as Crowley’s.

Aziraphale stared at the mural, baffled, but it wasn’t long before Nigel returned. He was holding a reassuringly familiar-looking flat package, and he plopped it down on the counter. “This is it, ain’t it?” he asked, tapping it with a finger encased in a plain black ring.

“Looks like,” Aziraphale agreed, easing the package from Nigel’s grip. He hugged it to his chest, trying his hardest to avoid letting his gaze stray to any of the temptations on the counter. “Thank you,” he said quickly, and then turned and fixed his gaze on the bottom of the door opposite him.

He took a deep breath and started forward, only letting his gaze be briefly diverted by a short stack of what looked like first editions by Gutenberg.

Aziraphale fumbled with the door but finally managed to free himself without any further distractions.

Once out in the pleasant warmth of his imagined day, Aziraphale had to stop for a moment and take several deep breaths. He tightened his grip on the package in his hands. _Crowley’s in trouble_ , he reminded himself sternly, trying to shake the images from the adult bookshop from his mind. _You need to get out of here and save Crowley._

After a moment of refocussing himself, Aziraphale took one more deep breath and crossed the street.

“Den of iniquity,” he muttered to himself in an undertone as he made his way back into his own, thankfully temptation-free, bookshop.

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale was relieved to find that the package contained everything he remembered putting into it, including two very large maps of the second and third circles of Heaven. He’d made some annotations on the former, marking the location of guard patrols and any structures, hills, or trees large enough to feasibly hide two people, but it was the map of the third heaven he was interested in.

In addition to having been his favoured route out of Heaven with Crowley, the third heaven was the one governed by Azrael, and where the individual heavens of departed souls were housed.

Aziraphale spread the map out on the table eagerly, ignoring his previous notes and sweeping his eyes across the map’s surface until he found what he was looking for—a quite large section of Heaven that ran off the edge of the map entitled, in a small, elegant script, “righteous soule accommodations.”

The area was filled with a tiny, dense honeycomb-like structure. Every six inches or so the pattern was interrupted by what looked like a platform emerging vertically from the honeycombs, each bearing the tiny script, “sentry post.” Between the outermost edge of the honeycomb structure and the remainder of Heaven lay a double line that looked discouragingly like a wall. Several rectangles were built into the double line with the identifying caption “Gate” accompanied by a Roman numeral.

Aziraphale pursed his lips and glanced over the rest of the map. As an angel, he had never visited Azrael’s area of Heaven—had never had a need to—so he wasn’t completely sure what he was dealing with. He’d walked or flown past it several times, of course, but always on his way to somewhere more interesting. The map didn’t offer a more in-depth look at the structure of the heavens besides the basic honeycomb pattern, and though Heaven’s library likely held a number of maps dedicated solely to them, Aziraphale hadn’t bothered to look at them the last time he’d been there.

Aziraphale tapped his fingers worriedly on the map and glanced over at the mirror. Crowley was still engrossed in the journal, still looking like his whole world had ended.

Aziraphale stood and navigated to the bookshelves in the back room, where he kept some of his most sensitive materials. If memory served, he had acquired a pair of scrolls on Heaven’s accommodations of souls several millennia ago that he distantly recalled having skimmed through once. He also seemed to remember having been distracted from that pursuit by Crowley, though, who had got himself into a spot of trouble with the Babylonians.

Aziraphale poked through his collection of scrolls until he found what he was looking for, stowed away right near the bottom: a pair of brilliant white scrolls edged in gold leaf.

Aziraphale cautiously tugged them out from the bottom of the pile, brushing the dust off their smooth paper. He returned to the table and unrolled the first one directly on top of the map.

He was delighted to find that, after a brief introduction, the scroll started off with a number of illustrations. They were somewhat similar to the honeycomb structure depicted on the map, though instead of flat hexagons these were three-dimensional spheres. One of the illustrations showed small black lines between adjacent spheres.

With another glance at the mirror—Crowley was unchanged—Aziraphale picked the scroll up and sat back in his chair. Holding the scroll horizontally (as was the correct orientation for a scroll of this age), he rolled back to the beginning and started with the introduction. The adjacent columns of neat text had aged well, and the scroll had clearly enjoyed its time in Aziraphale’s care, because the ink was still dark and the edges of the letters crisp and well-defined against the gleaming white paper.

Aziraphale settled in further and began to read.

 

~~***~~

 

The structure of the personal heavens, it turned out, was nearly impossible to depict illustratively. Each individual heaven was, for one thing, theoretically infinite, containing in it the potential to replicate the entire Earth (to the extent of the soul’s familiarity with and assumptions of it) and all the cosmos. It appeared that most souls never left their relatively small area of familiarity, though, which for Aziraphale encompassed Midfarthing and only so much of London as one had to travel through to reach St James’s Park or the Ritz.

All of the individual heavens were then neatly stacked on top of each other and compressed in four dimensions, which created the same problems with two-dimensional representation as those posed by the multiverse. As if this wasn’t problematic enough, the _quantity_ of individual heavens was also practically infinite, given that the number of righteous humans was an ever-growing finite number, and an ever-growing finite number is basically infinite.

Yet despite this four-dimensional stacking of infinite individual heavens, there was a defined surface to them, above which angels could fly and make sure everything was running smoothly. This unspecified upper space was likely where Azrael had come from and gone to when she’d dropped in to have a word with him. And just to ensure that things were working smoothly everywhere, a number of sentry posts were spread over the surface of the sea of multi-dimensional, bubble-like heavens like stepping stones. From the tops of these sentry posts, an angel could look for disturbances while simultaneously inhabiting the “upper” space that was more Heaven than the heavens.

This whole system was then circled by a protective wall. Since the souls within were presumably enjoying themselves, it was not a wall designed to keep them in so much as to keep potential assailants out. There were no sentry posts built into the wall, which was slightly strange, but the accompanying text made plain that none were needed, given the four-dimensional nature of the structure. Aziraphale wasn’t entirely certain what that meant, but he felt certain that if it were less than impenetrable, Azrael would have posted sentries of some sort along it. She was well-known for taking the duties of her position very seriously, more seriously than most of the other archangels.

Of more interest to Aziraphale, therefore, were the handful of gates around the wall’s perimeter. These would almost certainly be guarded, but they were the only way in or out, so far as he could tell.

It even seemed somewhat feasible for Aziraphale to travel from his personal heaven to the nearest gate—it turned out that the individual heavens were linked by hidden doorways. These had been built into the original design as a precaution, and allowed lateral movement between the heavens for inspections or similar routine measures. Nominally they were hidden from discovery by the human souls inhabiting the heavens, but Aziraphale had already broken through several of the standard illusions and didn’t see why this one should be any different.

The second of the pair of scrolls contained mostly a description of the spellwork that allowed the individual heavens to portray whatever would make the inhabiting soul the happiest. This included occasionally altering the memories of the deceased so that eternity didn’t feel so mind-bogglingly boring. The author of the scroll seemed particularly taken with this stunning array of spellwork, explaining at length the brilliance of its conception in keeping souls well-looked-after until Judgment Day.

This was the area Aziraphale already knew the most about—it hadn’t been just the author of the scroll who’d thought this was a pretty impressive bit of spellwork—but he took care to read through it all carefully anyway, in case it held any useful scraps of information.

He made a point to glance over at the mirror every couple of minutes, but Crowley had been quiet ever since he’d curled up on his bed, clutching the journal tightly against his chest. It looked like he’d finally fallen asleep, which was a relief; he’d spent a long time just resting there immobile, and he might have passed for unconscious had his eyes not been open, fresh tears still glinting on his cheeks.

Night had fallen on Aziraphale’s imagined Soho the same time it had on Earth, and Aziraphale had moved a desk lamp from the back room to the table so he could continue working.

It might have been wise for Aziraphale to sleep as well, even if he no longer had a physical body to look after, but he couldn’t justify letting himself rest while Crowley was in such a state.

Instead, he took all of his worry and guilt and shame and poured it into his research, determined to find a way to help Crowley if he had to die again to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there you have it—asexuality in a microcosm! Kudos to anyone who caught all of the references. I'm somewhere on the ace spectrum myself, and it's a really under-represented orientation, so I thought I'd do my part to advocate for awareness. If you're interested in learning more about asexuality and what it is, you can check out AVEN's website: http://www.asexuality.org/
> 
> The statue I mention is entitled 'Kiss of Victory' and is even more gorgeous in person:  
> http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/160585205818/alfred-gilberts-commemorative-sculpture-kiss-of  
> And I didn't even make up the fact that it has a serpent and tree on the shield!
> 
> Here's the Carina Nebula: http://www.constellation-guide.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Mystic-Mountain.jpg  
> and here's the Biblioteca Joanina: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3811/11875563333_70e042d304_b.jpg
> 
> You can see an illustration of the circles of heaven I was describing in the last section at http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/159864182608/the-seven-circles-of-heaven-for-edenverse-back


	5. The Fabulous Four

Aziraphale had rarely felt a true sense of community.

Heaven wasn’t as suited to community spirit as it was to efficiency and duty. Certainly there had been a sense of togetherness in the same way that cogs and springs together constitute a clock or individual soldiers an army, but it had been more of an association of necessity than that of choice.

While on Earth, Aziraphale had taken pains to not get too comfortable with any particular person or group of people, not least of all because their relatively short lifespans only invited eventual disappointment. He’d been less successful in preventing his attachment to certain places—Alexandria and London being prime examples—but Aziraphale wasn’t sure if he’d call it a sense of community, _per se_ ; more of an attachment to a place as a collection of buildings, a variety of food, and a range of books for sale.

Aziraphale had first truly felt included in a community when he’d lived in Midfarthing. Perhaps it was because, for the first time, he was able to approach the humans who lived there as equals, knowing that their lifespans matched his own. Or perhaps it was because he’d put in an extra effort to be sociable so that Crowley wouldn’t feel so bad about leaving him if he thought Aziraphale had made new friends.

But looking down at the mirror now, Aziraphale felt a swelling of something like community pride for the first time in his very long life. He thanked anyone who was listening for the rapport that had grown between him and the inhabitants of the village, because they were doing for Crowley now what Aziraphale couldn’t do himself.

Harper had arrived in the mirror two days ago, talking to Crowley and going so far as to make the former demon breakfast. Admittedly, Crowley spent most of the time in a sort of shell-shocked haze, but he seemed to come around every now and then, and Aziraphale was grateful that at least Crowley wasn’t sitting there alone.

Whenever he _was_ alone, Crowley had a disconcerting habit of curling up on the sofa or just huddling in his bed, looking like he hoped to fall asleep and never wake up again. To an extent, he still looked that way when someone else was around, but at least he seemed a little more alert, and occasionally he nibbled on whatever food they’d prepared him.

Today Bert was sitting with him, and Crowley was looking slightly less like an empty shell of his former self, so Aziraphale decided it was as good a day as any to start his reconnaissance of the exact layout of the heavens.

Specifically, that meant leaving his individual heaven and venturing into those adjacent to his until he had located where the nearest sentry posts were. Once he could place himself in relation to the nearest gate, he could start to create a map of his surroundings and observe more closely the movements of the sentries. Just leaving his heaven was going expressly against the wishes of Azrael, which meant there could be serious consequences if he were caught, but, given the sheer number of heavens and the relatively small number of sentries in comparison, those were dice Aziraphale was willing to roll.

Giving Bert and Crowley one last, lingering look, Aziraphale stowed the mirror away in a satchel that he’d found in one of the dusty unused bedrooms above his bookshop. Aziraphale slung the satchel over his shoulder and shifted his notepad and pencil into his left hand, leaving his right free to pat the satchel a bit nervously. He walked into the cottage and began his search.

He strode through all of the rooms, carefully patting at the air in case that might help, walking methodically back and forth. Once he’d completed searching the interior of the cottage, he shifted to the bookshop, walking up and down the aisles between his bookcases, searching for anything that was out of place or unusual.

He turned into the narrow aisle between the ends of the bookcases and the glass shopfront, and that’s when he felt it.

It was extremely subtle, so subtle that Aziraphale could easily see how it might be overlooked by anyone who wasn’t expressly searching for it. It was a sort of faint tingling in the air, accompanied by an unarticulated thought in his head that he ought to go back to the cottage and make himself some tea.

That was the largest hint—that unplaceable desire to leave where he was and go do something else. It was entirely possible that Aziraphale wouldn’t have found that thought suspicious at all had he not once been an angel, but the fact remained that he had, and it seemed that it lent him a certain imperviousness to the spells trying to shape his actions.

Aziraphale put his hand out and turned in a circle until he felt something not-quite-solid in front of him, parallel to the shopfront window. His hand definitely met resistance, but in a fuzzy, shapeless sort of way, as though he were holding the matching poles of two magnets together.

Aziraphale moved his hand down and back and forth until he felt something smooth and solid yet completely invisible, a little below waist height—a doorknob.

With a bracing nod, Aziraphale nervously tightened his grip on the paper and pencil and turned the knob.

The invisible door swung open smoothly and soundlessly under his touch, revealing what appeared to be the interior of a small cone-shaped tent. Aziraphale stuck his head through the doorway.

It was a very small tent—a tepee, he realised—and it was deserted. Sunlight was streaming through the entranceway, and the remains of someone’s lunch sat on a mat on the floor next to the cold ashes of a fire. A buffalo hide was stretched over the ground.

“Er, hello?” Aziraphale called. “Anyone home?”

There did not appear to be, so, with one last look over his shoulder at his Soho bookshop, Aziraphale stepped through and carefully closed the door behind him.

It was slightly cooler here, and he could hear the sounds of the wind rustling through the grass outside. Ducking his head to avoid hitting the side of the tepee, Aziraphale drew a circle at the top of his page, labelled it “Soho,” and added a second circle directly underneath it, which he labelled “Tepee.”

Aziraphale felt around the perimeter of the tepee, but didn’t feel any invisible resistance or a particular desire to be somewhere else.

Hugging his notepad to himself, he ducked and carefully exited the tepee.

He immediately realised that he was in a village of some description—a dozen other tepees were erected in a circle, and a row of animal pelts were tied to a wooden structure nearby rather like clothes on a drying line.

Trying not to feel so much like an intruder, Aziraphale started cautiously walking around, feeling for any resistance or strange thoughts.

He was halfway around the small clearing when there was a rustling of trees and a copper-skinned woman wearing a fringed deerskin dress burst out of the nearby forest and skidded to a surprised halt.

“Er...hello,” Aziraphale said, a little apologetically. “Don’t mind me.”

The woman blinked at him for a moment. “Who are you?” she asked after a long moment, stepping forward boldly. “Why have the birds stopped singing?”

“Er,” Aziraphale said, continuing his slow shuffle around the clearing and trying not to look like a complete idiot as he swatted at thin air, “afraid I don’t know, sorry.”

The woman took another couple of steps towards him, glancing around the village. She looked distressed. “Kohkahycumest disappeared right from my side,” she said anxiously, “and the life in the forest stilled. What is this omen you have brought me, great pale spirit?”

“Er,” Aziraphale said again. In his mind, he heard both _Kohkahycumest_ and _White Crow_ , and knew he was both speaking and hearing two languages simultaneously. “An omen of goodwill,” he said after a moment, and continued his circuit of the clearing.

The woman followed him. “Great spirit, let me hear your advice, and I will obey.”

“That’s quite all right,” Aziraphale fretted, abandoning the clearing in favour of moving behind the tepee and off towards another spur of the forest.

“Do you bear a message for my people?” she suggested. “Ohcumgache would be pleased to hear it when I awake from this dream.”

Again, Aziraphale heard _Ohcumgache_ with a simultaneous translation of _Little Wolf_. He continued along the treeline, sweeping his hands back and forth in the hopes of bumping into another door before the woman asked him any more questions.

Behind him, he heard the woman stop, feet rustling in the grass.

Aziraphale had gone another five paces before he realised and came to a reluctant halt, looking over his shoulder.

She had a hand to her mouth, looking stricken. “Oh, pale spirit, am I dead? Has life ceased because this is not a dream, but the beyond?” Her eyes filled. “Will Kohkahycumest/White Crow be all right without me?”

It was such a painfully familiar sentiment that Aziraphale could only gaze at her for a moment. She seemed to take this as an affirmative to her first question, and knelt down in the grass.

“Forgive me, great pale spirit,” she rasped, fixing her eyes on the grass in front of her. “I have no experience with spirit walking, nor with dying.”

Aziraphale crossed to her and extended his hand. For a long moment she just stared at it, and then allowed herself to be helped to her feet.

“There, there, my dear, everything’s perfectly all right,” Aziraphale assured her, and gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Your, er, Kohkahycumest—” the name rolled smoothly off his tongue— “will be back soon enough, I promise.” Aziraphale hesitated. His best guess was that his presence was interfering with the existence of this woman’s imagined friends and family—with all animate life, actually, including the birds—so it followed that, should he leave, they would return to her.

As to whether or not to tell the unfortunate woman that she had in fact been dead for centuries at the very least…

“What’s your name, my dear?” Aziraphale asked.

She sniffled slightly. “Inayat,” she said, and Aziraphale heard the translation as _One Who is Kind_.

“Inayat,” Aziraphale said, “let me assure you that everything is as it should be.”

She didn’t seem to know what to make of that, but she bobbed her head anyway. “Thank you, great pale spirit.”

Aziraphale gave her another, slightly awkward pat on the shoulder and returned to walking along the forest’s edge. Inayat followed him quietly, apparently in case he had any other cryptic things he wanted her to pass along to her people.

After a few metres or so, Aziraphale came to a surprised halt as it occurred to him quite paradoxically that he really ought to go to that one glen in the forest and watch the deer move through the trees, perhaps with Kohkahycumest at his side.

Aziraphale smiled and began to feel around, and quite soon he felt his hand meet an invisible resistance. He found the doorknob and turned back to Inayat.

“I’ll be on my way now,” he said. “Sorry for intruding. Everything will really be fine.”

She ducked her head. “Thank you, great spirit.”

Aziraphale gave her a tight smile and pushed the door open.

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale ducked through an artist’s studio, profoundly apologising to the Michelangelo wannabe in the process of painting a church ceiling.

“Monsieur, you are destroying my concentration! Didn’t the guards stop you? Art requires peace of mind!”

“Art requires an active mind,” Aziraphale muttered under his breath as he pushed the next door open. “You’ve given Adam two left hands.”

In the next heaven, he bustled past a gold- and ivory-edged table where a woman in Roman dress was poring over a number of manuscripts covered in geometric shapes.

“My word, and who do you think you are?” she demanded as he passed.

“Ah, no one, sorry, forget I’m here,” Aziraphale said, patting around in the air. It was unbearably warm out, but he could smell the sand and the sea, reminding him of his time in Alexandria.

“I hardly think that should be possible with you cavorting in front—”

Aziraphale pushed his way through the next door, taking care to close it firmly behind him.

He paused, looked around, drew another circle on his sheet of paper, and wrote, “Hut with ivory elephant,” because it was becoming more and more difficult to differentiate between all of the huts, houses, and other primitive dwellings that had dominated the majority of human history.

He inched through the office of a man with an oversized moustache reading a book, and then positively dashed through the bedroom of what looked to be an eleventh-century noble, looking pointedly away as the man in question groped for his presumably-scantily-clad partners who had vanished upon Aziraphale’s arrival.

“Sorry, sorry, no need to panic, just, really, _don’t move,_ please.”

In the next heaven, he gave a friendly wave to a man with a large white beard and a proper author hat who was sitting at a computer in the middle of typing something.

Aziraphale splashed his way through a shallow river next, surprising the boy fishing beside it, and then took a brief jaunt through what appeared to be pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa.

This was all reminding him a little unpleasantly of the time he’d had to bounce around Earth looking for a suitable person to momentarily possess during the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, but he tried to brush that from his mind.

Aziraphale passed through seven more heavens, pausing only to scribble down a note as to what he was seeing, and then came to an abrupt halt as he stumbled into a bedroom that could only be described as opulent.

Heavily-carved dark wood panelling lined the walls, framing beautiful murals of tragic heroes and heroines. An intricate golden chandelier hung suspended from the ceiling and rich Ottoman carpets covered the floor, but what caused him to pause was that, against all odds, he _recognised_ the space.

It was a room in Neuschwanstein Castle, that selfsame fairy-tale palace built in Bavaria in the nineteenth century that Aziraphale and Crowley had once discussed in the room above his bookshop. The castle had been constructed not as a military fortification but as a work of art, a point so integral to its design that theatre architects had been consulted to ensure that the rooms would have good acoustics.

This was the master bedroom, one of only a dozen rooms that had ever been fully realised. And if this really _was_ Neuschwanstein, then that meant the man drawing back the gold and silver curtain on the intricately-carved bed was none other than—

“I’ll be buggered,” Aziraphale breathed. “I was _right.”_

Ludwig the Second, King of Bavaria, met Aziraphale’s gaze from his place sprawled on the bed, expression a cross between indignant and desperate under artistically mussed hair.

“What have you done with Richard?” he demanded.

Aziraphale blinked at him, still surprised. This Ludwig was in his prime, not yet gone to the seed of his later years or bogged down by the demands of his government—but of course, why would he be? This was his paradise.

Ludwig seemed to realise he was only half-dressed but pulled himself off the bed anyway, shrugging into a heavily-embroidered silk nightshirt he’d collected from the floor. He started buttoning it up. “Speak; I am your king. What have you done with Richard?”

Aziraphale remembered himself. “Ah,” he fumbled, “A friend of yours, I imagine? He’ll be back just as soon—”

“He is more than a friend to me,” Ludwig interrupted, finishing the buttons on his nightshirt and gesturing grandiosely. “He is my everything, my all. Wagner has written of our love, so pure in its form, so worthy of the speech of poets—”

“Er,” said Aziraphale.

“But yet,” Ludwig continued, unhindered, “even now, as I caressed the curve of his cheek, he did but vanish in front of my very eyes! And _then_ , you forced your entrance into this, my most private of sanctums, so, pray, explain yourself or I shall set the guards on you.”

Ludwig folded his arms, looking rather like a petulant child.

Aziraphale raised the end of his pencil to his lips, opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked down as he made a note on his sheet of paper. He shook his head. “Crowley is never going to believe this.”

“A _hem_ ,” Ludwig protested. “Answer me.”

Aziraphale looked back up at him. “Oh, yes, sorry. Your, er, friend will be back in a mo. Don’t worry about it.” He turned and started walking across the room, feeling around for a door or any out-of-place thoughts.

Ludwig dropped his folded arms and pursued him relentlessly. “Don’t _worry about it?”_ he repeated, incredulous. “Richard is the fairest man I have ever met and to whom I have pledged my all and shared my kingdom. Once we were separated but weeks and the distance neatly rent me asunder. How can you ask me to _worry not?”_

“He’ll really be back in just a minute,” Aziraphale assured him, exiting the bedroom and poking around in the equally impressive dining room beyond it. Ludwig didn’t appear to be following him, so he took a moment to tug the mirror out of his satchel.

Crowley was still sitting with Bert, looking miserable and drawn.

“You would not believe where I am right now,” Aziraphale told the mirror in a slightly smug undertone. He ran a finger lightly over the edge of the frame.

“A colour photograph!” exclaimed a voice from behind him, and Aziraphale jumped as he realised Ludwig had followed him after all and was now peering nosily over his shoulder. In the mirror, Bert scratched the back of his neck.

“Mein Gott,” Ludwig stammered. _My God_ , it translated unnecessarily in Aziraphale’s head. “A _moving_ colour photograph _.”_

Aziraphale hastily stowed the mirror back out of sight in his satchel. “It’s not a—never mind,” he muttered, regretting having ever taken the mirror out as he returned to his search for another door.

The grandeur around him truly was stunning, and it wasn’t long before Aziraphale paused, a question occurring to him. “Say, er, Ludwig, is the entire castle finished?”

Ludwig seemed affronted by the question. “Really? _That_ is what you have to say for yourself, intruder?” He turned to survey the room, and seemed to realise that they were alone. “And where are the guards?”

“Same place as, er, Richard, I imagine,” Aziraphale said, moving into the dining room and pausing to admire a golden statue of Siegfried fighting a dragon sitting on a nearby, handsomely-inlaid table. “But, really, is it finished?”

Ludwig let out an insulted huff. “Of course it is. Over two hundred rooms, each fully decorated and furnished by only the finest talent in Bavaria.”

“Naturally, naturally,” Aziraphale agreed, continuing to pat down the air. “Very nice.”

“What _are_ you doing?” Ludwig asked.

“Oh, just looking for an invisible door,” Aziraphale said truthfully, moving through another doorway into a beautiful study covered with the same combination of breathtaking murals, woodcarving, and tapestry.

“An _invisible door?_ ” Ludwig asked incredulously as he followed him. “You’re madder than they say I am if you think—”

Aziraphale found said invisible door and tugged it open.

“Mein Gott,” Ludwig stammered again.

Aziraphale turned back to him and held out his hand. “Pleasure meeting you, really.”

Ludwig shook it cautiously. “You’re a wizard,” he concluded. “Or a saint.”

Aziraphale laughed a little at that and pulled the door open further. “Not anymore.”

He stepped through the doorway but, before he could tug it closed behind him, he felt Ludwig squeeze in after him.

“Oi,” Aziraphale protested, but Ludwig had already pulled the door closed and was staring slack-jawed around them.

“Mein Gott, you _are_ a magician extraordinaire,” he said. “An entirely new room, wedged into my castle by means most wonderful—”

“Please tell me I just imagined that.”

Aziraphale and Ludwig pivoted as one to see a man staring at them from behind a desk piled high with papers. He was wearing a long, rather heavy-looking tan coat and a silk cravat, a style that Aziraphale recognised had gone out of style in England approximately two hundred years previously, and there was a slightly strange-looking American flag sitting behind him to his right.

“Er,” said Aziraphale, who was still not very good at this.

“Another magician?” Ludwig queried, striding out from around Aziraphale before the former angel could stop him and making a beeline for the desk. “An assistant to the deception, perhaps? How intriguing.”

“Hold on one minute,” the man said quickly, standing up and pointing a vaguely threatening finger at Ludwig. “I don’t know who you are or how you came to be here, but you’d better leave now.” The man’s finger moved from Ludwig to Aziraphale, including the latter in his statement.

Ludwig drew himself up to his full height. “This man is a magician,” he said firmly, gesturing behind him at Aziraphale, “and he is entertaining me with his amusements and illusions while I await the return of a dear friend of mine.”

The man behind the desk just stared at him. “You need to leave.”

Ludwig folded his arms. Aziraphale was still staring at the American flag—he was finally realising that it looked strange because it only had thirteen stars.

“I am a king,” Ludwig said hotly, “and I will not be told what to do.”

The man’s face darkened. “That is something only a fool claims when standing in this office. There will never again be a monarchy in this country; it is most strictly forbidden—”

Ludwig waved his hand. “Well, I’m not from _your_ country, now am I?”

The man frowned. “Are you an ambassador, then? Your accent is most well adapted.”

Now it was Ludwig’s turn to frown. “I’m from Bavaria, surely you’re familiar with it?”

“Bavaria?” the man asked, bewildered. “In the Holy Roman Empire?”

Ludwig opened his mouth to respond, clearly insulted at the very implication, and Aziraphale hastily stepped in. “Gentlemen, please. Ludwig, go back to your castle. Er, sorry about him.” Aziraphale addressed this last to the man behind the desk, jerking his head at Ludwig. “He’s not supposed to be here.”

The man stared at him. “And neither, I would be prepared to bet, are you, subject of the Crown. Do you know where you are?”

Aziraphale glanced briefly around himself, but the square room looked much like any other from this time period. There was some nice art on the walls. He shrugged.

“The executive residence,” the man said slowly, as though he thought Aziraphale would have a hard time grasping his words, “of the White House of these United States of America.”

Aziraphale put that together. “Ah,” he said. He tilted his head at the man. “And that makes you…?”

The man rolled his eyes. “The _President_.”

Aziraphale frowned at him and thought back, trying to produce something sensible to say. He had some hazy recollections of reading about the American War of Independence, but he hadn’t really been paying any attention at the time. “Er, that’s nice,” he settled for.

The man stared at them. “Who _are you?”_

“Doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale said, changing tacks and adopting a brusque tone. He turned away and started feeling around for a door, deciding that if he ignored them, maybe he could actually get some work done.

“He just burst into my residence, same as yours,” Ludwig informed the American.

“What’s he doing?”

Ludwig raised an eyebrow and glanced almost conspiratorially at where Aziraphale was poking around some curtains. “Looking for a magic door,” he confided.

The man took a deep breath and moved out from around the desk, throwing down the paper he’d been holding with ink-stained fingers. “Well, he won’t find one there, I assure you, I had the place most _thoroughly_ checked for magic doors when I—”

Right on cue, Aziraphale popped open the next door.

“That’s—not possible.”

“I’m telling you,” Ludwig said. “He’s a magician.”

Aziraphale pushed open the door and started through it, into a small tiled room.

Behind him, he heard Ludwig scrambling to follow.

“Hey now, you can’t talk about magic doors and then run off,” the American exclaimed, hurrying after them.

Aziraphale ground to a halt and turned to tell them both to not follow him, but they’d already burst past him and skidded to a halt, door slamming behind them. At the same time, a woman let out a loud shriek.

The three men turned to see a woman immersed in a very sudsy bathtub mere feet away, pooling more piles of soapy water towards her and looking very prepared to scream again. She glared daggers at them, and all three hastily averted their eyes.

“Sorry, sorry,” Aziraphale said, hurrying past her and searching desperately for another door.

“My lady,” Ludwig said, running after Aziraphale.

“Deepest apologies,” the American mumbled.

“Get _out!”_

Aziraphale found the next door and they all but threw themselves through it.

They staggered out onto a lit stage, almost striding right off its front lip, and this time it was the American who had the presence of mind to close the door behind them.

“My, my,” said a voice from behind them before they’d even had the chance to catch their breath. “That’s some magic trick, and it’s not every day I say that.”

Three heads swivelled to see a rather short man in a dark frock coat and white bowtie looking at them with an arched eyebrow. Behind him was a large red curtain, swept all the way across the stage and obscuring anything behind it. Apparently the man had been introducing the performance.

“Tell me, was the audience ever there, or did you just simulate the sound of a crowd and then dazzle me with the stage lights?”

“Er,” said Aziraphale, who was saying that a lot lately.

“He’s a magician,” Ludwig said helpfully, pointing at the former angel. “He made my Richard disappear from beneath my very own hands, and he walks through invisible doors into other worlds!”

The American just seemed perplexed, looking around him in surprise. “Laurens and I had better lay off the booze,” he muttered to himself.

“Clearly he’s a magician,” the man on the stage agreed, striding forward and extending his hand to Aziraphale. “Just one with whom I am not yet familiar.”

Aziraphale shook his hand awkwardly.

“Harry Houdini,” the man supplied. “The Great.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. Neither Ludwig nor the American seemed the least bit impressed, though the latter stepped forward anyway and extended his hand.

“Alexander Hamilton,” he introduced himself. “You may have heard of me.” He flashed a smile.

Harry wrinkled his nose. “You know, I think I have,” he said. “You’re from New York, right? Can never shake the accent.”

Alexander grinned. “You could say that. The greatest city in the world, am I right?”

“Very true, we shan’t let San Francisco get her down.”

Alexander’s smile faltered. “Forgive me, but I’m not familiar—?”

Aziraphale tuned them out and strode towards the red velvet curtain, prodding around for a door. Ludwig trailed after him.

“Hey, hey, don’t touch anything, now!” Harry called after them, breaking off his conversation with Alexander to jog after Aziraphale as he parted the curtain and stepped through.

Behind it, taking up centre stage, was a large, gleaming glass box taller than a person and filled to the brim with water. Several props were arranged around it, including a large screen and a metre-tall clock painted like a stopwatch.

“Are you a magician as well?” Ludwig asked, turning to Harry.

Harry seemed surprised by this question. “I’m the Great Houdini,” he said again, as though he thought Ludwig had missed it the first time. When Ludwig didn’t seem to glean any new information from it, Harry sighed. _“Yes_ , I’m a magician. Best in the world, many would say.”

Ludwig seemed unimpressed. “I’ve never heard of you.”

Harry frowned. “Where are you from?”

Ludwig drew himself up, clearly trying to recover some of his majesty, which was a little difficult given he was still in his nightclothes. “Bavaria,” he said proudly.

Harry brightened slightly. “A German?”

Ludwig seemed exasperated by this. _“No_ , a Bavarian.”

“He’s confused,” Alexander confided to Harry in an undertone.

“I’ve toured Europe,” Harry said, sounding a tad confused himself. “I spent two months in Berlin, performed in Paris, Vienna, Moscow, all of them.”

Ludwig shrugged, still unimpressed. “I’ve really never heard of you.”

Aziraphale was relieved when he found the next door, tucked behind the large prop clock. He turned back to the three humans.

“If you’d all just return to your heavens—” he began.

“Heavens?” Alexander echoed, and Aziraphale realised belatedly that he probably should have used a different word.

“Wait,” Harry said, prodding at Ludwig’s shoulder. “What year is it?”

Ludwig stared at him, looking suitably insulted, though whether it was due to the question or the fact that Harry had dared to lay a hand on him, Aziraphale couldn’t tell.

“1874,” Ludwig asserted.

Alexander seemed to be putting it together as well, and Aziraphale quickly manhandled the door open.

“It was 1803 last time I checked,” Alexander said, and looked at Harry.

“1921,” Harry said. _“That’s_ why you haven’t heard of me, and why you hadn’t heard of San Francisco—it hasn’t been founded yet!”

Aziraphale edged through the door, hoping to get some peace and quiet, but Ludwig noticed what he was doing and dashed after him, grabbing onto the edge of the door before he could close it behind him.

“Wait, magician, when are you from?” Ludwig asked, bundling through the door after him, Alexander and Harry following suit.

“Come on, really, you all should go back,” Aziraphale said with a tired sigh, grinding to a halt. “You can’t be traipsing all around—”

“Guards!”

Four heads pivoted to see a man in a mix of armour and toga pointing at them rather dramatically. “Seize them!”

There was a slightly awkward moment in which no guards arrived, and the man in the toga slowly lowered his hand. “What witchcraft is this?”

“Magician,” Ludwig said helpfully, pointing to Aziraphale, who let out an exhausted breath and looked up at the rather intricately moulded ceiling.

“Me too,” Harry said, half-raising a hand. “But he’s better.”

The man in the toga looked furiously between them. “And who exactly are you, to stand so unashamedly in the presence of the Caesar?”

“Ludwig,” Ludwig supplied. “The Second, King of Bavaria.”

“Alexander Hamilton, President of the United States.”

“The Great Harry Houdini—hang on, you weren’t president!”

Alexander turned to him hotly. “Of course I was! Am!”

Harry frowned at him. “1803, you said? Who did you succeed?”

Alexander folded his arms. “John Adams, the Federalist bastard.”

“Jefferson was after Adams,” Harry informed him. “Thomas Jefferson. Everyone knows that.”

 _“Jefferson?”_ Alexander seemed affronted by the very thought. “That frog-loving libertine? Never.”

“Yes,” Harry insisted, ignoring Alexander’s colourful turn of phrase, “Jefferson, and then Madison, Monroe...I forget who else.”

“Madison as well? You’re clearly not remembering things properly—”

 _“Ahem,”_ said the man in the toga, clearly annoyed at being ignored. “If you do not explain your presence in my palace immediately, I shall have you most forcibly removed.”

“Hey, you’re a Roman, right?” Harry said, intrigued. “But you’re speaking English!”

There was an immediate sound of disagreement from Ludwig. “He’s speaking German, same as the rest of us.”

Now it was Alexander’s turn to stare. “That’s very clearly English.”

“Or are we all speaking Latin?” Harry posited, putting a hand on his chin. “I’d love to be speaking Latin.”

“Guards!” the man in the toga said again, loudly, but again no one came at his call.

“They’ll all have vanished,” Ludwig told him, waving his hand as though to illustrate. “The magician does that. And makes doors, and has a moving colour photograph!”

“A moving _what?”_ Alexander asked. “Certainly not!”

“He does!” Ludwig protested. “He keeps it in his bag!”

Harry moved forward as though to see for himself, and Aziraphale took a hasty step backwards, realising for the first time that the situation was no longer in his control. “Really, now, if we’d all just take a moment—”

Harry stepped around him and Aziraphale moved a hand automatically to his satchel, but somehow the mirror ended up in Harry’s hand anyway.

“Oi!” Aziraphale said sharply, panic flaring through him as he reached to snatch it from Harry’s hand, but the magician twisted away and brought it over to the others.

“Look, just like I said!” Ludwig said smugly.

Aziraphale started towards them, determined to rescue the mirror at all costs, but found himself held back by the man with the toga, who’d closed the distance between them and taken Aziraphale by the upper arm. “You, magician, explain yourself.”

Aziraphale tugged his arm free and sighed, resigning himself to being without the mirror for a few moments more. “Really, I’m quite sorry about all this, er, I’ll take them back—”

“Do you know who I am?” the man in the toga asked, clearly insulted to be treated in such a manner.

Aziraphale looked him up and down, but he’d really only known a handful of the Roman emperors, and those were primarily because Crowley had taken a shine to them. “Not a clue,” he admitted.

The man drew himself up to his full height. “I am Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus, and what you are doing is tantamount to treason.”

“I assure you, really, it’s fine—” Aziraphale said, breaking off as he heard Alexander say something loudly about New York.

He turned to see the three of them leaning over the mirror. _“See,”_ Alexander was saying, jabbing at something in the surface of the mirror, “it’s my name next to that star. Unlike _some people_ ,” here he glared at Harry, “New York remembers me.”

“This is not the New York I know,” Harry said, peering closer. “Who’s Lin-Manuel Miranda? A friend of yours?”

“Excuse me,” Aziraphale said to Otho, and then turned and crossed the distance to the cluster of souls that had followed him, elbowing his way through and wrenching the mirror from Alexander’s grasp. The image had changed from Crowley to a street in what was presumably New York City. One of the buildings was lit up, showing an exceptionally large advert with a gold background and a black star. Aziraphale scowled down at it and then looked up at the three of them.

“What did you do?” he said sharply.

“I just asked it to show me New York,” Harry said. “It being a magic mirror and all.”

Aziraphale scowled at him. “You of all people should know better.”

“Hey, I didn’t think it would _work,”_ Harry protested. “I know this is all just some sort of trick. It’s _very_ good, though.”

“It’s not—it’s not a... _hoax,”_ Aziraphale said, sighing and tucking the mirror away in his satchel. “Or a trick or a magic show. I can assure you of that. But really, you all need to go back before you cause more trouble.” Azrael’s words of warning were ringing in his head.

“You said something about ‘heavens,’” Ludwig pointed out. “What’s that mean?”

Harry frowned. “Yes; you’re not claiming spiritual powers, are you? I can’t stand those people.”

Aziraphale sighed again, but all four of them were now looking at him expectantly. He shifted uncertainly, keeping a hand clamped on the edge of the mirror through the fabric of the satchel. “Look, do you really want to know?”

“I daresay we’ve come too far not to,” Alexander said.

“Explain yourself,” Otho said shortly.

Aziraphale drummed his fingers on the top of the satchel and glanced down briefly at the notepad still in his hand. He looked back up at them: Ludwig, with his mussed hair and nightclothes; Alexander, powdered hair still impeccably arranged; Harry, looking like he’d walked out of a rather nice formal dinner; and Otho, gleaming in his armour with a toga thrown fashionably over one shoulder.

“All right,” he allowed. “You’re all dead.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Sorry?” Harry asked, at the same time Otho growled, “Is that a threat?”

“It’s the truth,” Aziraphale said. “If it’s any consolation, I’m dead too. It’s past the year 2000 in the ‘real world’—Otho, that’s the full two thousand years for you. All of you must have led somewhat decent lives, because you’ve made it to Paradise. Congratulations.”

They all considered this for a moment.

“You each were rewarded with your own personal paradise,” Aziraphale continued heavily, “where you’re surrounded by the people and circumstances that make you happiest.” He turned to Alexander and gestured at Harry. “If Houdini says you were never president, he’s probably right; you’re only the president in your heaven because you want to be. Ludwig, you never got to share your kingdom with Richard on Earth, so you get to do so in Heaven. But you’re each the only real person in your heaven; that’s why everyone else disappeared when I came in. Having two souls in the same heaven shorts out the system, I think, since it can’t decide whose subconscious to listen to.” Aziraphale gave them a sad smile. “I’m sorry, but that really is the truth.”

There was a long silence.

“Richard...wasn’t real?” Ludwig asked at last.

“I’m sure he was real enough,” Aziraphale said, trying to inject some measure of compassion into his voice, “but he wasn’t who you were with just now. If he’s in Heaven, he’d be in his own little pocket of it, just like this is a pocket, the one belonging to Otho here.”

“I’m...not president?” Alexander asked, deflating. “It was really _Jefferson?”_

“Tough breaks,” Harry muttered to him.

“Come on, now, let’s get you all back to where you belong,” Aziraphale said, making herding motions towards the door they’d come through. It was still open, showing a bizarre, disembodied stretch of stage and red curtain. To his relief, the three out-of-place souls complied and started filing back through the door, one by one.

“I’ll be damned...Doyle was right,” Harry said to himself as Aziraphale herded him back through the door. “I’m _never_ going to live this down.”

Once it was just Aziraphale and Otho, the former angel turned back to him. “Sorry about the inconvenience,” he said.

“Has it truly been two _millennia?”_ Otho asked. He looked suddenly rather upset at the thought. “Tell me, what has become of Rome? Her people?”

Aziraphale gave him a small smile. “The empire fell apart,” he admitted. “But it was gradual. And she was the talk of Heaven while she lasted.”

Otho nodded resignedly. “I suppose that is all a man can ask. Go in peace.”

Aziraphale stepped back through the door and pulled it closed behind him. On the stage, Harry had pulled something that looked like a pound note out of his pocket and was handing it to Alexander. “Knew I’d heard of you somewhere,” he said with a wink.

Alexander looked a little bemused, but pocketed whatever Harry had given him when he saw Aziraphale approaching.

“We’ll just re-open the other door and that should take us straight back to your, er, White House,” Aziraphale said, gesturing at Alexander.

Alexander sniffed but followed him nonetheless. “My nonexistent White House, you mean. Aaron is going to have a field day over this.”

“I’m sure it’ll all be fine,” Aziraphale said, locating the previous door and pulling it open. He ushered Alexander and Ludwig through.

“Hey, magician,” Harry called after them. “Let me know how you do that trick one day.”

Aziraphale muttered something about not being a magician and pulled the door shut behind him.

It was the same rigmarole with Alexander, and then it was just Aziraphale and Ludwig, back in Neuschwanstein.

“There, now, just, stay here,” Aziraphale said, raising a hand to rub over his forehead. He was exhausted, and still no closer to locating the nearest sentry post to his heaven. He ought to head back and start moving in a more regular pattern, whatever that may be.

“Apologies if I caused any undue difficulties,” Ludwig said, seeming to catch onto Aziraphale’s fatigue. “And I didn’t mean for future boy to steal your moving photograph.”

Aziraphale dropped his hand back to his satchel automatically, making sure he could still feel the solid edge of the frame through the material. “Don’t worry about it,” he said with a heavy sigh.

Aziraphale moved past Ludwig, stepping back into his bedroom and patting around near the curtains, where he’d emerged.

“Is he dead too?” Ludwig asked from behind him.

Aziraphale continued poking through the curtains. “Who?”

“Your friend. The one in the photograph. He did not appear to be well.”

Aziraphale’s hands stilled, throat closing. “No, no, he’s not—” He took a deep breath and continued patting the air. “He’s not dead.”

Ludwig was quiet as Aziraphale finally located the fuzzy resistance of the door. He was about to pull it open when Ludwig spoke again.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Aziraphale started guiltily and looked over at Ludwig, who was standing with his hands clasped in front of him. Aziraphale looked back at the invisible door, which meant he was looking at a rather nice curtain, and swallowed. “That obvious, huh?”

“I felt the same way about Richard,” Ludwig said. “When we were parted. I recognise the feeling.”

Aziraphale gave a short huff of laughter that came out a little more choked than he’d intended.

“You’re trying to get back to him, aren’t you?” Ludwig asked. “That’s why you’re here.”

Aziraphale exhaled, feeling his shoulders dip. “I am,” he admitted. “It’s stupid, I know, there’s such a small chance—”

He felt Ludwig lay a hand on his elbow. “I wish you luck,” he said. “And offer my services if there’s anything I can do.”

Aziraphale felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Thank you,” he said, and meant it.

“Now go and look for him,” Ludwig said, stepping back.

Aziraphale gave him a tight smile and stepped through the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, nothing like deceased historical figures to lighten the mood!
> 
> If you want to read some letters between Ludwig and his illicit love, his equerry Richard Hornig (not to be confused with the composer Richard Wagner), there are some /super/ gay ones here: http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/160618610933/from-the-diaries-and-letters-of-king-ludwig-ii . I'd recommend reading the last one as well-- that is straight out of a Disney movie. I'm 90% sure these are genuine, but full disclosure there's a chance that Ludwig's diaries, which went through a lot of hands during WWII, might have been tampered with. If anyone wants to know an ungodly amount more about Ludwig and his incredible life and super shady death, do message me! I love rambling about this nerd.
> 
> Houdini's also a really interesting person (as you'd probably expect), and there's a History channel miniseries about him that's historically kind of iffy in places but certainly entertaining! Also there was a Fox/ITV/Global tv series a few years ago called Houdini & Doyle that was /really/ not historically accurate at all, but my god was it funny! Would recommend.
> 
> And lastly, though Houdini says San Francisco hadn't been founded by Hamilton's time, it was, in fact, founded in 1776.


	6. Forgotten

Watching Crowley grieve was perhaps the most painful thing Aziraphale had ever voluntarily put himself through. Crowley had been reassuringly okay for the week or so the villagers stuck with him, but after they left he seemed to slide into a deep depression.

He rarely left the cottage and, worryingly, showed very little interest in eating anything.

Aziraphale knew this shouldn’t have bothered him too much—Crowley was still immortal, after all, and didn’t really _need_ to eat—but this was coupled with an alarming tendency to do nothing more active than sit on his bed or curl up on the sofa. Though he didn’t lose any weight, his face did become noticeably more drawn, and his cheeks were always either unnaturally pale or flushed pink.

The days started adding up and, if anything, Crowley became even more withdrawn. He spent an incredible amount of time just staring off into space, sometimes shaking, other times gripping onto whatever happened to be in his hands until his knuckles went white.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, had made several more expeditions into neighbouring heavens and drawn up a rough map. More importantly, he had located a sentry post.

He had stumbled upon it quite by accident, and it had taken him several seconds to realise that, instead of opening a door to yet another heaven, he’d staggered onto a bit of Heaven deserving of the capitalisation.

Luckily, it seemed the sentry post spanned several floors, because Aziraphale had popped out into a sort of stairwell. He’d retreated immediately and then, after apologising to the elderly Chinese woman whose heaven he was hiding it, crept back into the stairwell. The staircase wound up and down out of sight much like spiral one, except that it was inexplicably square, necessitating landings every ten steps or so.

Aziraphale inched up the stairwell step by step and peered around every corner with the utmost caution until he located the sentry, stationed at the very top. Not wishing to get himself caught, Aziraphale retreated soundlessly back down the stairs and continued until he was at the bottom of the tower-like structure. He hadn’t gone very far down before the staircase terminated in a locked door. The door was unmarked apart from some inlaid silver, but Aziraphale suspected the room behind it was likely stocked with weapons, maps, and anything else the sentry might be in need of.

As tempting as it was to try to find a way to break the lock, steal a weapon, and knock out the sentry, Aziraphale knew it wouldn’t do him any good. He’d be captured before long and, if his understanding of the sentry posts was correct, the only way to leave one was by flying or travelling through the heavens as he already was. To make matters worse, the door’s lock bore a sigil stating that only an angel with the status of a throne or above could unseal it. To Aziraphale’s knowledge, no spell existed that could override such a lock, which left him at a bit of an impasse anyway.

So he’d returned to his own heaven and spent the rest of the day combing through his books in more detail while, in the mirror, Crowley put his head in his hands and sobbed.

That was easily the worst part about it—at least when Crowley was staring off into the distance, Aziraphale could imagine he was just lost in thought. But when he got like this, it was difficult to pretend his heart was doing anything but breaking.

The former demon would be sitting on the sofa, or the floor, or curled up in his bed, and sob until he didn’t have any breath left. His cheeks would grow slick and his nose bright red, arms wrapped around his knees or anything else readily available—a pillow, or one of the sofa cushions. His whole body would shake, sides heaving, and even when the worst of it was over he’d just sit there and shiver. Sometimes he’d dry heave, hands pressed into the floor or the end of the bed, and tremble until it looked like he was about to collapse.

Crowley was very clearly going through hell, in almost every sense of the word, and watching him without being able to offer even a modicum of comfort was, just as surely, putting Aziraphale through hell too.

Aziraphale did his best to look after himself, because he had to keep his strength up so he could continue trying to find a way to reach Crowley, but even that was becoming increasingly difficult.

He’d lost much of his appetite, and though he really didn’t need to eat any more than Crowley did these days, it was certainly having an effect on his mood. This was not helped by the fact that he only let himself catch some sleep after he’d driven himself to the point of near-exhaustion. Though Aziraphale theorised that he shouldn’t have needed sleep at all, that didn’t seem to stop his imagined body from demanding it.

But every minute mattered, as far as Aziraphale was concerned, and a minute he could be resting was a minute he could be scouring his books for useful materials or mapping the heavens. He made concessions to himself only when it became clear that if he continued on he would make mistakes, but even then he slept fitfully and was lucky if he could catch more than a couple of hours at a time. The only blessing was that his mind was blissfully blank while he slept, for which he was incredibly grateful—when he’d had to sleep nightly as a human, he’d been plagued by a whole company of recurring nightmares.

During the day, there was a heavy, acidic feeling that had taken to settling in the pit of his stomach, and it was impossible to mollify. He did his best to soothe it with tea, but he was finding the time he spent in their Midfarthing cottage increasingly difficult. He saw Crowley in everything, and when he wasn’t dwelling worriedly on his friend sobbing into the sofa cushions, he was gazing guiltily at the row of slim black journals.

The proper kitchen was considerably more useful than the tiny kitchenette above the bookshop, though, and the bed more comfortable, so he didn’t abandon it completely. He did have to actively focus on not glancing at the closed door to Crowley’s room too often, though.

Whenever he wasn’t fetching a cup of tea or catching a few hours’ restless sleep, however, Aziraphale kept strictly to his Soho bookshop. He heavily associated the bookshop with Crowley too, of course, but they were older memories, and ones where Crowley had kept himself at more of a distance.

The table in the bookshop was piled high with stacks of books, and more sat clustered on the floor next to it. But despite all the resources in the bookshop, Aziraphale’s searches kept turning up fruitless.

There did not seem to be a way to contact Earth using only a minor sigil, which left only options that included Aziraphale first finding a way to break out of the individual heavens. But after that, the problems just compounded—could he somehow get a message to Crowley using Gabriel’s set-up, even if he didn’t have any powers? If he tried to escape down to Earth and find Crowley himself, how would he physically get from Heaven to Earth? He’d have to jump from the edge of Heaven, but without wings he’d drop like a rock, and once he got there, presuming he survived, he’d be trapped in the ethereal plane. Feasibly he could steal a corporation before he jumped, which meant he’d be physical once he got there, but he still wouldn’t have wings to fly down. Could he...manufacture some sort of ethereal parachute? Surely it would vanish halfway down the fall, though, where the ethereal and physical planes diverged, which meant Aziraphale would only physically fall _half_ of the distance from Heaven to Earth.

His plans always got a little wild at this point, but he was working with limited data and the mounting desperation of a man realising the full extent to which he is trapped.

So Aziraphale threw himself even more vigorously into the one thing he could actually do: study Azrael’s sentries stationed around the heavens.

He worked out the shortest route from his heaven to the sentry post he had found, and then started branching out, making careful annotations in his notepad as he travelled through even more personal heavens, until he had located a second sentry post. From that he was able to extrapolate a pattern, and his map of the individual heavens, which he’d started sketching in some detail on the back of his map of the second heaven, slowly started growing.

In the mirror, the days trickled by and Crowley turned to drink, drowning himself in alcohol from the same wine bottle he’d used before, the one he’d once been planning to save for Christmas. He sobbed soundlessly, drained the bottle again and again, and grew motionless sprawled on the floor or the sofa night after night. Aziraphale could have sworn he’d actually discorporated himself several times, but Crowley always stirred the following morning, usually looking as though he wished sincerely he hadn’t.

When Crowley had kept this pattern up for a week solid, Aziraphale walked into his imagined Midfarthing and returned with a large bottle of brandy he’d convinced a reluctant Bert to give him.

He only let himself have a couple shots, to steady his nerves, but it didn’t really help and he had to exercise all of his remaining willpower to continue slogging through a dense text on the integrity of souls and not join Crowley on the floor.

Two days later, Aziraphale walked through heavens until his feet were sore, having long since given up on even apologising to the people whose heavens he passed through. He walked all day and well into the night, in as straight of a line as he could manage, until he ran into a wall.

The author of the set of gleaming white scrolls had certainly been correct when they’d written that this wall needed no guards. That’s because, strictly speaking, there _was_ no wall, but, rather, an absence of doors.

Each individual heaven had a number of doors into and out of it, Aziraphale had discovered. He estimated there were at least six, but potentially much more depending on the exact multi-dimensional architecture. Two of the doors always sat facing each other at a distance of no more than twenty metres—these were the doors Aziraphale had primarily been utilising. They allowed him to travel in a relatively straight line, as well—or, at least, in what he assumed was a straight line. It was possible he was moving in a spiral, or maybe the placement of the doors didn’t correlate to linear space like he was assuming they did.

When he walked into this last heaven, though, it quickly became apparent that there was no door facing the one he’d just strode through. He’d become uncannily good at finding them in under a minute, but he was simply unable to locate this one, even though he searched for a full ten minutes. It was then that Aziraphale remembered the scroll and its words about an impenetrable, four-dimensional wall.

Aziraphale wandered around in the heaven—it was remarkably quiet, just a quaint meadow with some misty blue mountains in the background—until he found another door, one which he estimated was at a ninety-degree angle to the one he had originally entered through.

In this next heaven, he found the door facing him almost immediately, but no door at a ninety-degree angle going in the direction he’d been heading thus far.

In a sense, it was much like Aziraphale had found the outermost hallway in a rather large office building, where he could move parallel to the structure that was the outer wall of the building but never pass through it.

Not unless he was on the ground floor, of course.

So Aziraphale continued on this parallel path, and walked all night until he found a gate.

Aziraphale supposed he had been envisioning some sort of multi-dimensional portal, but it was just a regular gate. Specifically, it was a baroque triple-bay arch with so much marble, gold, and stucco that Bernini would have quit sculpture altogether.

Heaven generally had little taste when it came to the fine arts, but they’d managed to take notice of the extravagant churches being built in their honour long enough to renovate Heaven’s more prominent locales to match. Of course, baroque architecture had already gone out of style by the time they’d got around to carrying out the updates, but it was likely Heaven hadn’t noticed yet.

The door Aziraphale finally found let out into a rather small room. The room was completely empty, if rather lavishly decorated, and there was a flight of stairs sitting opposite him that led upwards.

As Aziraphale stepped cautiously onto the inlaid marble floor, he saw with surprise that the door he had just come through was visible now—it was made out of a beautiful dark wood, edged with silver like the one in the sentry post and inlaid with sigils in what looked like white gold. There were three nearly identical doors adjacent to it, all positioned beside each other in the same wall.

Taking note of which one he had come through, Aziraphale crept to the foot of the staircase and inched up it, just as he had at the sentry post. He knew that even being here was dangerous and reckless, but when he’d last paused to glance down at the mirror—he kept it with him at all times, tucked into his satchel—Crowley had still looked like he was trying to drink himself into his grave.

Fixing his mind on the ultimate goal of his mission, Aziraphale rallied his courage and crept to the top of the staircase.

The staircase twisted around itself and then Aziraphale emerged into a small square room that looked rather like a lobby. A large arched door was opposite him, and the space was lit via a couple of tall, narrow slits set high in the wall.

Aziraphale crept to the door and, with the utmost caution, inched it open. He peered out.

There was a sort of white stone platform stretching in front of him, on which the gate was standing. It only extended forward a couple of metres and then abruptly stopped. Beyond it lay a bizarre sea of shifting colours and lights that Aziraphale realised must be the individual heavens, all carefully stacked and compressed together in multiple dimensions. He leaned a little bit further out and, since he couldn’t see any sentries, quietly slipped through the doorway.

The two flanking arches of the triple-bay gate complex, Aziraphale saw now, weren’t proper arches at all—the architecture was there, but the arches themselves had been filled with doors, of which Aziraphale had just passed through the rightmost one. Which meant that the lobby-like room Aziraphale had just walked through was actually _inside_ of the gate structure, which was itself almost ten metres deep.

Aziraphale cast a glance around the platform, looking for sentries or guards. It appeared deserted, though, just the stretch of white platform and, beyond it, the swirling heavens.

Using the extravagant plinths and pillars as cover, Aziraphale edged towards the central bay, which didn’t appear to be blocked by a door like the flanking ones. Keeping his feet as silent as possible on the smooth stone platform, Aziraphale risked a glance around the edge of a large, spiral-turned column. He risked two more quick glances and then stood still for a moment, breathing heavily, back pressed against the column.

He could literally _see_ Heaven, just through the arch, so tantalisingly close it seemed for the first time that this might actually be a feasible plan. Or, at least, it might have been had there not been a large silver gate between him and it. Aziraphale hadn’t been able to get a good look at the gate, but he was willing to bet his first edition of Dante’s _Paradiso_ that it was engraved with sigils to restrict passage. And if the gate hadn’t been there, it was possible the two angelic guards on the other side with their backs to him would have noticed him trying to escape.

Heart hammering in his chest, Aziraphale very slowly retraced his steps, returning to the right-hand arch, passing through the door, across the small lobby, down the stairs, and back through the now-visible door he had come through, into the individual heavens.

Aziraphale put ten heavens between himself and the gate before he allowed himself to come to a halt. He waited for a few minutes for his heart to return to its normal pace, and then pulled out the mirror. Crowley was half-curled around the wine bottle in his hands, looking very ill but also like he didn’t plan on stopping until he blacked out.

Aziraphale sighed worriedly, tucked the mirror away, dipped his head, and walked home.

It took even longer to get back, and he grew so tired from having stayed up all night that he had to turn back several times when he realised he’d made a misstep somewhere. When he finally returned to the relative safety of his imagined Soho bookshop, he didn’t even bother climbing the stairs in his and Crowley’s cottage, instead merely dropping onto the sofa as, in the mirror Aziraphale had left tucked away in his satchel, Crowley was woken by a very concerned barman.

 

~~***~~

 

After that, Crowley laid off the alcohol. Aziraphale didn’t know why, exactly, but he was glad for it. This was accompanied by an uptick in Crowley going out into the village and making an attempt to eat more regularly. He still looked drawn and unwell, and sometimes he still drank too much, but he seemed to be trying to pull himself together.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, was growing increasingly frustrated. The weeks were really adding up now; he’d been dead for over two months. _Two months_. He had never honestly expected it would take more than half that time to get a message to Crowley, but he also hadn’t expected to be so utterly trapped without his powers.

He kept going back to the sentry posts and gate, camping out in a hidden corner for hours at a time and tracking the lengths of the angels’ shifts. They were usually around forty consecutive hours, which wasn’t unusual for angels—there was no real need to eat or sleep, and the sentries had clearly been doing this for so long that they were no longer bothered by the monotony of it, if they ever had been.

Unfortunately, the exchanging of sentries didn’t present much of an opportunity to slip past unnoticed, and the two guards at the gate were relieved at different times. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the guards always stayed on the far side of the gate, which meant that Aziraphale would either have to lure them over to his side (thus losing the element of surprise), or find a way through the silver gates himself.

But there was only so much studying and planning he could do when there were still such gaping holes in the latter portion of his plan. He didn’t have reliable maps of any of the heavens other than the second and third, didn’t know how to contact Crowley or how to make it to Earth, and, most importantly, he didn’t know if it was worth the risk.

His plan had an increasingly vanishing point of success, whereas if he stayed here and kept his nose clean, there was an actual chance Crowley would realise he wasn’t really gone and come looking for him. It might take a long while, but surely that was better than Aziraphale making a foolhardy escape attempt only to be caught? Heaven would certainly make good on their promise to relocate him somewhere less pleasant, if they didn’t just execute him outright. And then Crowley would figure it out and arrive in Heaven, looking for Aziraphale, only to find that, through his own errant stupidity, Aziraphale had got himself permanently killed. It hardly bore thinking about.

So Aziraphale stayed his hand. He had done all he could for the time being. He had explored every avenue he knew of to get news to Crowley. He had read and reread every book in his library with the slightest promise, he had studied sentry posts and gate shifts, and he was still not an inch closer to actually doing any good than he had been the moment he’d first jolted into awareness in his back room.

For the first time in weeks, Aziraphale went out into the village. He walked to the pub, chatted with Bert, and forced himself to eat some imagined food, but it just wasn’t the same. Bert didn’t seem to have anything new or interesting to say, for one thing, which Aziraphale supposed glumly was a byproduct of him being only a recycled version of his actual self. The food was generally quite good, though, like the alcohol, it seemed to lack some unidentifiable quality of richness.

He spent time with Harper as well—he’d become rather good friends with the cafe owner during his human life—and even stopped by to drink some tea with Donnie and her cats, but there was always the idea lurking in the back of his head that he was talking to shadows. He would have called them ghosts, except that it was clear who the real ghost was.

In the mirror, Crowley turned to reading, so Aziraphale did as well. He even plucked the same books off their Midfarthing bookshelf that Crowley did, so they could read together. Crowley usually gave up within the first fifty pages, though, leaving Aziraphale to sit there alone, staring sightlessly down at the book in his hands and wondering bleakly if he’d be shadowing Crowley’s movements like this forever. Always following, never touching; always one step behind, Crowley always just out of reach.

Given Crowley’s sudden aversion to reading, it really shouldn’t have surprised Aziraphale all that much when, one day weeks later, Harper arrived in the mirror and started taking Aziraphale’s books away. Crowley helped, which implied he had orchestrated this, and Aziraphale had to forcibly remind himself that there were things more important than his books.

Crowley wasn’t giving them away because he was betraying Aziraphale’s trust, Aziraphale told himself; he was just making sure they had a good home. A good home where they might be read by someone who didn’t break down after a dozen pages. Besides, Aziraphale had a copy of all of the books right here, in his heaven.

And his heaven _had_ started to feel like home, despite his greatest attempts to prevent the attachment. It did not matter how perfect of a replication it was, Aziraphale reminded himself often. It was meant to be perfect, meant to lull him into a false sense of security. It was built to maximise his happiness, to the potential extent of airbrushing Crowley’s current plight out of his memory completely if he forgot about it for too long. Aziraphale did not intend on ever changing a single thing about his memory of Crowley, even if it was for his own good—he was done with having his memory messed with, and done with forgetting Crowley.

But despite all of Aziraphale’s assurances to himself that Crowley was just making a smart, logical decision where the books were concerned, that didn’t stop him from feeling both irrationally upset and deeply discouraged.

It was unlikely Crowley ever planned on retrieving the books from Harper, and he knew how much they had meant to Aziraphale.

In the end, Aziraphale told himself that the books had only been making Crowley miserable anyway, in which case he was glad the blasted things were gone. That didn’t stop him from glaring daggers at Harper the entire time he was in the mirror’s view, though.

Shortly thereafter, Aziraphale started perusing the books in his imagined cottage of his own volition, re-reading sections he remembered only hazily through the fog of his then-flagging memory.

When he came to the row of slim black journals, Aziraphale’s hand came to an uncertain stop. He’d reread the first one alongside Crowley several times, and it was currently sitting on the kitchen table behind him, but he hadn’t so much as touched the remainder of the volumes since he’d arrived. Aziraphale had destroyed their Earthly counterparts, after all, and it had seemed inexcusable for him to have access to them when Crowley didn’t.

Then Aziraphale pulled the second volume off the shelf anyway, sat down in his chair, and started reading.

After a handful of pages, he had to stand up to fetch a pen. He then proceeded to make small notes in the margins, correcting previous information or adding the occasional dropped word.

 _I’m just editing them_ , Aziraphale told himself with a somewhat forced calm. _Never got a chance to do that, before. This way, when he gets here, he can read an edited version_. The _when_ was a very solid thought in his head. Crowley reading the journals was quickly becoming a facet in the increasingly unlikely daydream Aziraphale turned to whenever things were looking particularly bleak, the one where Crowley strode cheerfully into his heaven and they were able to escape this mutual nightmare.

In the mirror, Crowley continued to slog through everyday life, seeming at times to be almost back to his normal self. Well, maybe not his _normal_ self. Aziraphale hadn’t seen him smile in weeks, and he was still eating only sparingly. But he wasn’t breaking down as often anymore, and he was able to walk into the village and talk to Bert or someone else without looking quite so much like he wanted to throw himself into a river. He was coping. Someone like Crowley didn’t live six thousand years if he didn’t know how to keep going when the light at the end of the tunnel flickered and went out.

Aziraphale finished annotating the second journal and moved onto the third, and then the fourth. By the time he reached the eighth, he had noticed a palpable decline in the quality of his writing, to the point where he was running out of space for annotations.

The next morning, Oscar arrived at his door bearing a package full of blank, identical slim black journals.

So Aziraphale sat down with the ever-present mirror on his left and the journal on his right, and wrote.

It was a useful distraction from the mirror, and it allowed him to think back over their earlier adventures fondly. There were things that, looking back, Aziraphale had been surprised at that now didn’t seem out of character for Crowley at all. He detailed their myriad of misadventures, grimacing sometimes at his actions or Crowley’s, but he recounted it all faithfully nonetheless.

The happy memories went right alongside the embarrassing and the downright shameful ones, because, pleasant or no, this was the history of him and Crowley, and Aziraphale didn’t want to change one line.

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale had thought watching Crowley grieve was the worst thing he’d ever subjected himself to, but he was wrong. Watching Crowley _stop_ grieving was worse.

In the mirror, Crowley grew more like his old self every day. He ate breakfast one day, made tea twice the next, and took long walks. He kept busy, going back and forth between Midfarthing and the cottage, meeting people and completing tasks.

Aziraphale would have done the same, except there was no one to meet except projections of his own subconscious, and no tasks to be completed apart from the one that had turned out to be utterly impossible.

So he at least kept himself busy, working on the journals and writing about the better times, in some sort of desperate hope that, if he held onto Crowley tightly enough, he would be able to prevent the former demon from drifting away.

One day, Crowley sorted through the post on the table and recycled everything with Aziraphale’s name on it.

Aziraphale wrote about Babylon, and the hanging gardens Crowley had taken such an interest in. Looking back at it now, he realised that those gardens might have been the first thing on Earth Crowley had ever really loved, back when Aziraphale still naïvely thought such an emotion beyond the demon.

In the mirror, Crowley removed the metal screen from in front of the fireplace and tucked it away underneath the sofa.

Aziraphale recounted the fall of the Tower of Babel, remembering fondly all of Crowley’s sarcastic little jokes that the demon had had to explain to him several times.

Crowley crept into Aziraphale’s room, clinically stripped the bed, washed the sheets, and then remade it until it was neat and orderly, corners crisp around the edges of the mattress.

Aziraphale and Crowley were sparring, but only verbally across a mud rooftop, and Aziraphale was doing his best to hide the fact that he’d been dreadfully bored for _ages_ and this was the most interesting thing to happen in decades.

Crowley cleared Aziraphale’s shampoo, razor, and other items from the loo and dumped them in a cardboard box. They were joined by the ID Crowley had miracled up for Aziraphale years ago, the handful of trinkets from his desk, and his medical records, including the MRI scans. Crowley held those last in his hands for a long moment, staring down at the plastic sheets with a blank expression. Then he slipped them into the box and pushed the entire thing onto the top shelf of the cottage’s tiny cupboard under the stairs. Before long the cupboard also welcomed Aziraphale’s coat and shoes, and then Crowley closed the door.

Aziraphale was deep into pre-Arrangement territory, but there were still so many fun stories to recount, so many pathetic or accidentally ruinous attempts to discorporate each other. Like that time when Crowley had conspired to have him executed only for his plan to backfire at the last minute, resulting in _him_ being executed instead. Aziraphale did not think this memory should have made his chest hurt so much, but it did. They all did, and no amount of tea could lighten the load.

Then, Crowley picked up the ever-present wine bottle and walked into the kitchen with it. He stood there for a long moment, just looking down at it, and Aziraphale’s mind flipped back through two millennia worth of shared Christmases.

Crowley rubbed his thumb over the label one last time, and then leaned over, pulled open the cabinet under the sink, set the bottle squarely in the recycling box, and walked away.

Aziraphale stood abruptly, his throat clogging as the back of one hand went to his mouth. His other still held the pen and journal he’d been in the middle of rewriting, and he looked down at it through slightly hazy eyes.

 _That’s one of the funny things about Memphis, I suppose_ , read the sentence Aziraphale had just written.

He stared down at it. He knew exactly what he’d been about to write, of course, what exactly was so funny about the Egyptian capital, but all of a sudden it seemed completely and utterly _pointless_.

Crowley wasn’t coming. Crowley was _never_ coming.

That was the plain and simple truth of the matter, Aziraphale was seeing now. Crowley had finished grieving. He was no longer looking for Aziraphale, no longer mourning him or holding out any hope. He was removing the reminders of Aziraphale from his life.

He was moving on.

Aziraphale ground his teeth against the burning at the corners of his eyes and along his sinuses. He shouldn’t be upset with Crowley for moving on, shouldn’t be upset with him for doing what he needed to do. Did he really want Crowley to be miserable forever, without him? Of course not.

No, he wanted Crowley to be happy. Of course he did. That was what _mattered_ , after all. That was all that had ever mattered.

In fact, this was the best possible scenario that could have occurred upon Aziraphale’s death: a period of mourning, perhaps, because they _had_ been friends for quite a long while, and then Crowley making his peace and moving on. He wouldn’t have wanted Crowley to hold onto a damaging hope that Aziraphale was still alive when he wasn’t; he’d have wanted Crowley to go on without him.

Unfortunately, this logic was no longer enough to persuade Aziraphale. It was all well and good to say that he wanted Crowley to get over him when he was gone, but the fact remained that _Aziraphale wasn’t gone_.

He knew it was stupid and selfish and illogical, but Crowley was _his_ , as much as Aziraphale felt comfortable laying a claim on another living being. He had sacrificed so much for the demon and loved him with every ounce of his strength. He had given himself to Crowley so completely and irrevocably, and now Crowley was rejecting him in every way that it seemed possible to reject someone.

He had removed from their cottage everything that had once made it shared, because of course it was no longer _their_ cottage—it was _Crowley’s_ cottage. And he was stripping everything from his life that might have reminded him of Aziraphale, boxing the Fallen angel up and leaving him somewhere dark and dusty, where he wouldn’t be able to trouble him further.

And now, he was _throwing him away_. Did Aziraphale really matter so little to him?

Aziraphale took a deep gulp of air and tried to remind himself that Crowley owed him nothing, not even the keeping of his memory. But that didn’t stop the wave of betrayal and anger from rising up in him. He didn’t _want_ Crowley to forget him, didn’t want to be worth so little to Crowley that he was so easily discarded and replaced. He had given Crowley his everything, and he wanted that to mean something to Crowley.

Was he watching his future play out in front of him—Crowley moving on, forgetting him, and Aziraphale, always clinging to this damnable mirror, afraid to look away for one minute in case Crowley should suddenly realise Aziraphale wasn’t truly gone? Was this really how he was going to spend eternity—watching himself being forgotten in the affections of the one person he could never bear to forget?

In the mirror, Crowley left their cottage without bothering to put a coat on and headed down the road towards the village.

“Yeah, go talk to Bert,” Aziraphale said, voice thick with unshed tears. “See if I care. Since he’s such a _friend_ —”

He had to stop to draw breath, feeling tears streaking down his cheeks at last. “More of a friend than _I_ ever was, _apparently_ —”

Aziraphale dragged his gaze from the mirror, wiping at his eyes angrily with the back of his hand. “Nah, it’s okay,” he told himself, struggling to regain control of his emotions. He mustn't blame Crowley for this. Crowley hadn’t done anything wrong—had _never_ done anything wrong, not where this was concerned.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Aziraphale said hoarsely to himself, hoping that if he vocalised the emotions he wanted to be feeling, that would make them materialise. “He still cares, deep down, really, he’s just doing what he has to—”

_He’s given up on you. He’s done. It’s over. If it ever really began._

Aziraphale gave an aborted little sob as he lost the battle to reign in his emotions.

“Oh, God, _Crowley,”_ he managed at last, voice choked. _I love you_.

“I—I can’t—” Aziraphale broke off again. His head fell forward, tears clinging to his lashes, and he realised with some surprise that he was still holding the journal. He tossed it down on the sofa, along with the pen. “I’m sorry, Crowley, I can’t do this anymore. I just—I _can’t_ —”

He put the back of his hand over his mouth and strode quickly from the room, into the bookshop. He needed some fresh air, _now_ , needed to be somewhere that didn’t remind him of Crowley. Unfortunately, every inch of his heaven seemed to have been designed to do just that.

Aziraphale pushed open the door to his bookshop and stepped outside, but the Bentley was sitting there, and that only raised a new wave of tears. Aziraphale spun and strode back inside, breaths coming fast and tight. He grabbed his satchel from where it was hanging off the back of the chair by the table, still piled high with books. He marched back into the cottage and grabbed the mirror unceremoniously from the sofa, shoving it in the satchel.

Then he strode back into the bookshop, pushed open the invisible door out of his heaven, and climbed out into a new world.

 

~~***~~

 

It should have been easy, finding a place that didn’t remind him of Crowley, but it was nearly impossible. Aziraphale saw him in everything, in every glimmer of sunlight and brush of breeze, felt his spirit haunting him through dozens of heavens. There was no escaping, Aziraphale supposed, that which he had made such an integral part of himself.

When Aziraphale’s strength flagged and his aching heart could take it no longer, he stepped through one last door, sat down on a rock on the edge of a little stream, put his head in his hands, and finally let himself grieve.

He cried a little bit for Crowley, but mostly for himself and all his broken hopes. It didn’t matter anymore if he somehow escaped Heaven or if Crowley figured it out—it was over. Too much time had elapsed, maybe not much in the scale of millennia, but they had been living on the terms of human timescales for too long for that to matter.

Aziraphale was dead.

It was time he started acting like it.

 _I should go back to my heaven_ , Aziraphale thought miserably. _And never leave again._

Maybe he’d been fighting his fate for too long. Maybe he should toss the mirror into this stream, walk back to his heaven, and let his pain be washed away. Maybe that other, kinder Crowley would reappear, and Aziraphale could at least pretend Crowley loved him. Maybe that was best for everyone.

Aziraphale stayed there, trembling, head in his hands, for a very long time. Slowly his shivers ceased, until he was just staring sightlessly through his fingers at the stream bubbling past. It was bright and clear, and looked cool and refreshing. Aziraphale wondered dully if he could drown in Heaven. He wondered if Crowley would forgive him if he did.

He should go back to his heaven. He should pick up the mirror, and go back, and keep writing the journals. Maybe make himself a nice cup of tea. That would make him feel better.

It was a transparent lie, but a familiar one. Sniffling, Aziraphale pulled himself together and stood up, muscles protesting the movement. He ran a hand over the top edge of the satchel to make sure the mirror was still there—it was—and, head bowed, walked back in the direction of the invisible door. He saw he had left it ajar, but this seemed of little consequence. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he’d closed hardly any of the doors he’d passed through. _Oh well._

All the undue caution Aziraphale had shown thus far seemed hilariously overblown. He doubted Heaven actually cared about his whereabouts any more than Crowley did.

Aziraphale hugged the satchel close to his side and slowly walked home.

 

~~***~~

 

Aziraphale sat down on the sofa, collected the journal, put pen to paper, and picked up right where he’d left off.

There was nothing else _to_ do. He did what every good British man and woman had done since the invention of the stiff upper lip: he carried on.

In the mirror, Crowley stared down at the frozen, dead flowerbeds and made no move to continue Aziraphale’s tradition of planting flowers. But, of course, why should he? It wasn’t Crowley’s tradition.

Aziraphale started writing slower, loathe to reach the last page and the finality that it would bring. He was slowly unravelling their shared history, scrolling backwards in time, but he knew now just how finite that length was. When he reached the end, that would be it.

Crowley went through the fridge and threw out those handful of items only Aziraphale had ever eaten.

Aziraphale was in the days before the Flood, dawdling as much as he could while knowing full well that very little of note had happened.

And then Crowley went through his own drawers and pulled out a long, tartan scarf.

For the longest time Crowley just stared at it, and Aziraphale swallowed heavily, resigned, waiting for him to put it in the cupboard with all the other things of Aziraphale’s he no longer wanted to deal with.

And then Crowley raised his hands and wrapped the scarf around his neck, pulling it tight and twisting his fingers in the ends.

Aziraphale stared at the mirror in surprise, pen lax in his hand.

He was honestly surprised Crowley even still had the scarf after all this time. He supposed he wasn’t sure how Crowley would have got rid of it, but it surprised him just the same.

Aziraphale had been a little put out, he recalled, when Crowley hadn’t liked it in the first place, but he’d known how picky the demon was about what he wore. Aziraphale had even taken that into account as best he could, picking what he thought were dignified shades of green and red from which to knit it, as well as a particularly soft, thin yarn one of the women from the quilting group had recommended to him. He clearly hadn’t thought it through well enough, though, because, as far as he was aware, Crowley hadn’t touched it since Aziraphale had given it to him.

Which was why he was so surprised now to see Crowley winding his fingers in the material.

In the mirror, Crowley tugged the middle section of the scarf up until it covered his nose, inhaling deeply as though searching for some long-faded scent. Then he sat down heavily on the corner of his bed, pulled the scarf down from over his nose, rested his forehead against the heel of his hand, and looked very much like he was trying not to cry.

Aziraphale gazed down at the mirror, taken aback. Not only was Crowley not consigning the scarf to the forgotten oblivion of the cupboard under the stairs, but he seemed to be acting like it genuinely _mattered_ to him, which was more consideration than he’d shown any of Aziraphale’s other possessions.

And then Aziraphale wondered suddenly if he’d been misreading Crowley completely. Maybe he wasn’t removing all the physical reminders of Aziraphale from his life because they no longer held any meaning for him—maybe it was because they held too much.

Aziraphale blinked, letting that thought sink in.

In the mirror, Crowley gave up on holding back tears and began crying, just controlled little motions of his shoulders as he wrapped his free hand in the end of the tartan scarf.

Aziraphale realised that he had underestimated Crowley yet again, and wondered bleakly if it was a habit he was ever going to break.

Crowley had proven over and over that Aziraphale mattered to him very much, even if Aziraphale was quick to forget. Crowley had given up his own freedom to stay with him in Midfarthing, after all, and then worked tirelessly to try to find a way to unFall him. He’d stayed steadfastly by his side throughout Aziraphale’s waning years, helping the former angel when he couldn’t help himself, and never once even teased him about it. And then, near the end, he had pressed a length of actual _rope_ into Aziraphale’s hands and begged him to throw him to the mercies of Heaven so that Aziraphale might be saved.

And yet, somehow Aziraphale had managed to put all those actions aside and insult Crowley by thinking that, just because Crowley never verbalised how he felt about Aziraphale, that meant he cared any less.

“Oh, my _dear_ ,” Aziraphale whispered to the mirror, feeling a simultaneous burst of relief and the heavy settling sensation of guilt at having ever doubted Crowley’s commitment, “I’m so sorry.”

He rubbed his thumb unhappily on the edge of the frame, wanting nothing more than to gently wipe the tears from the cheeks of the one person who, though Aziraphale couldn’t say the same, had never once doubted him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see my sketches of the gate to the heavens here: http://improbabledreams900.tumblr.com/post/160500457813/the-gate-to-the-individual-heavens-governed-by


	7. The End of Eternity

A week later, Aziraphale sat down and wrote about Eden.

It had been a strange time, the early days of Creation. Everything had been shining and bright and new, and the unsullied Eden more beautiful than Heaven had ever been. That’s where their Father had really dedicated His time—the Earth. He gave it lushness beyond compare and a diversity of creatures and climes great and small that would never cease to amaze. About it all He spread the stars and all the wonders of the cosmos, twinkling out of the velvet darkness down on Eden below.

Eden was on Earth, of course, some would say at the very navel of Creation. Aziraphale had been a cherub in those days, working under the archangel Jophiel to protect and defend the Earth and Heavens. At first, there had been no need to guard Eden—the creatures of the Earth were free to roam wherever they pleased, as no evil yet lurked in the world, the Abyss still lying empty.

Then one of the seraphim started speaking out. They called him the Morningstar, and he said that their Father was wrong to have put all the angels in the service of mankind. Aziraphale heard him speak once, from the back of an anxious crowd, but hadn’t been particularly enthralled. He wasn’t interested in disobeying his Father, for one thing, and for another he quite liked humanity. Adam was as noble in spirit as they came, and Eve the kindest and most steadfast of all the creatures. Neither of them were what you’d call particularly bright, but they meant well, and there was a capacity for cleverness in them that the other animals lacked.

Before long, Lucifer had drawn two of the other seraphim to his cause—the angels who would be called Beelzebub and Mephistopheles after the Fall—and his speeches started growing more daring. He railed against their Father, going so far as to threaten the safety of Eden and the fragile humans within it. The archangels, who had yet remained loyal, grew alarmed, and the first set of guards was posted on Eden—one on each of the four gates quickly constructed along the cardinal directions. The post at the Eastern Gate, of course, was assigned to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale had never guarded anything before, and quickly tired of the exercise. He wasn’t present when half of Heaven Fell, but he didn’t have to be. He felt it, felt the pain of thousands of his brothers and sisters as their Father cast them from His grace. Their agony was as sharp as a dagger and burned as brightly as the flaming sword in his hand. And suddenly Aziraphale was very grateful he’d been assigned to boring guard duty after all.

Then an elegant, almost iridescent black serpent slithered up to him and commented offhandedly on the weather.

Shortly thereafter, Aziraphale gave away his flaming sword.

The serpent reappeared not long after, looking somewhat shell-shocked and, if anything, a little lonely.

Aziraphale felt the narrative trail off after that—he’d already written about his next encounter with Crowley, a hundred or so years later. He was remembering the last time he had written this narrative, when his memory had failed him to such an extent that he couldn’t recall a single moment in that dazzling Garden. Crowley had recounted the story for him instead, and Aziraphale had dutifully copied it down. It had included a rather detailed account of the temptation of Eve, which Aziraphale had only really heard summarised accounts of before, most of them from second-, third-, and even fourth-hand accounts. It hadn’t really seemed appropriate to pry, and Crowley had always shied away from the topic or given some generic answer when he’d brought it up.

But Aziraphale also remembered _another_ , subtly different but starkly honest narrative of events, again from Crowley’s own mouth. Because in those final, painful months of Aziraphale’s mortal existence, Crowley had come clean at last. About his Fall, his ‘vague saunterer’ narrative, his experiences in the Garden—everything.

In the present, it took Aziraphale several long moments to remember the narrative—he found it took a few seconds to recall things he’d learned or experienced while his human memory had been disintegrating, but he could get there in the end.

As happened whenever Aziraphale thought over something that had happened in those last years, he felt a heavy guilt settle over his shoulders like a mantle. Crowley had told him the truth of a matter so deeply personal he’d hardly ever mentioned it to Aziraphale in six thousand years, and Aziraphale had forgotten it within the hour.

He really hated himself sometimes, hated what the disease had done to him. It was one thing to die a mortal death, even a prolonged one, but it was quite another to die a mortal death after putting Crowley through such a terrible span of years.

It was just one of the many ways he’d underestimated Crowley.

And he knew he’d hit upon the truth of the matter there because, now that he was really looking, he saw that Crowley _wasn’t_ doing well at all. He acted like he was doing fine, going about his daily routine and trying to busy himself, but whenever he was alone in a room he would grow very still, one hand often drifting to the scarf at his neck. Aziraphale had yet to see him take it off—he even slept with it on, and even seemed inclined to forgo showers in favour of miracled freshness.

But Crowley was making a concerted effort to be okay, and to move on with his life, even if he had to do so alone. And as much as Aziraphale knew that Crowley would probably be thrilled to discover that Aziraphale was, in fact, _not_ consigned to oblivion, that no longer seemed like a likely option.

So Aziraphale did the only responsible thing he could: he decided to make peace with the idea of Crowley never coming.

He simply couldn’t exist forever with the prospect of Crowley figuring it out at any moment, day in and day out, any more than Crowley could with the idea of Aziraphale still being alive. If Crowley was making peace with his demise, then Aziraphale would make peace with his solitude. Maybe Crowley would still figure it out—certainly he would _eventually_ —but by then it might be too late.

Who was to say how long Crowley’s affections would last? Aziraphale wasn’t about to make a hasty underestimation of his friend again, but knew as well as anyone how time could change the heart. Maybe, if it really did take years for Crowley to figure it out, he would have fallen out of love with Aziraphale and be uninterested in falling _back_ in love with him. Which, as chilling of a thought as it was, would be something Aziraphale would have to accept.

And then there was always the problem of Aziraphale still being dead. His imagined Bert had been right when he’d said that there was no reason for Crowley to stay with him. His heaven was, at best, a pale imitation of Earth, devoid of that spark of innovation that made it such a beautiful and fascinating place. That was what Crowley really loved the most about the Earth and its people, Aziraphale knew, and it was something his imagined Soho and Midfarthing simply could not supply. But maybe Crowley wouldn’t care, or maybe he and Crowley could arrange something. They were good at that.

In any case, Aziraphale made his peace.

Or, at least, he tried to.

He made his final changes and annotations to the journals as he read the entire set through one last time, this time in chronological order. In his mind, he walked through his entire life, so much of it intertwined with Crowley’s. He laughed at the good times and cried at the bad, and, after he’d finished each journal, he set it carefully back on its shelf. He ran his finger one last time down each supple leather spine as he finished the accompanying volume, and told himself that that was the end of that book. He allowed himself this one last jaunt through his memories, one last time of remembering all that Crowley was to him.

And when he was done, he left all of the journals on the shelf and walked away.

Within three days he was back, staring at their identical black spines. He didn’t allow himself to take them off their shelf, but he was helpless to prevent his mind from wandering back through their contents anyway.

He tried to place some emotional distance between himself and Crowley, but it was impossible to shake the feeling of unfinished business. All of the _should have done_ s were still hanging over him, and he knew they would, to an extent, plague him forever.

But maybe there was one thing he could get off his chest.

So Aziraphale, making a special concession to himself, pulled the Eden journal off the shelf and turned to the last page he had filled. He hadn’t brought himself to end it properly, just trailed off the last paragraph, leaving the rest of the page blank and expectant, awaiting a continuation of the story. Here Aziraphale put his pen to paper, and wrote what he had never been brave enough to vocalise during his life.

He told Crowley he loved him. It was a relatively short paragraph, all in all, just a couple of brief sentences stating the facts so plainly that Crowley could not possibly misinterpret his words. He did not appeal to Crowley to verbally return the affection, or try to guilt him into anything. He just laid it out, barely convincing himself to not follow the paragraph with an apology. He was no longer ashamed of his emotions, and certainly not this one.

If Crowley ever figured out that Aziraphale wasn’t really gone, if he took the time to visit, and if he cared enough to read the rewritten journals, all the way back to what was simultaneously the very first and last volume...well. If he cared enough to read them all, then he deserved to know how Aziraphale felt. Or, rather, Aziraphale deserved to tell him.

Aziraphale was tired with this peculiar dance of does-he-or-doesn’t-he, tired of the ambiguity. To an extent, it really didn’t matter if Crowley felt comfortable enough verbally or even consciously returning his affections, since he’d already proved himself through his actions, but Aziraphale wasn’t going to try to pretend to hide his own feelings anymore for the sake of Crowley’s self-deception.

Aziraphale knew he likely wasn’t brave enough to tell Crowley point-blank, especially in person, knew the same lines of reasoning that had convinced him to keep quiet in his life would return to haunt him, so he wrote it down instead, leaving it for Crowley to find. Crowley could do what he wished with the information, but at least it would be out in the open.

For a long time Aziraphale looked down at the journal and his carefully-penned, clear-as-day confession of love. Then he wrote a simple _fin_ and closed the journal. He tucked it back on its shelf, spine perfectly matching the other volumes, all carefully rewritten or edited. They were ready for Crowley, if and when he arrived.

Now, Aziraphale supposed, all he had to do was wait, and find whatever closure and comfort he could in the meantime.

It was easier said than done.

Aziraphale ended up spending an inordinate amount of time just watching Crowley in the mirror, which probably didn’t help any, but if finding closure required abandoning Crowley, even the image of Crowley in the mirror, for any length of time, Aziraphale wasn’t interested in it. He had already abandoned Crowley once, and did not intend on doing it again, ever.

And Crowley didn’t seem to be doing as well anymore. Winter was beginning to set in in earnest on Earth, though Aziraphale’s heaven remained perpetually sunny and warm. With the turning of the seasons, Crowley seemed to return to the same semi-catatonic state he’d inhabited in the month or so directly following Aziraphale’s death. He spent more time sitting or curled up on the sofa, and remained indoors, confined to the tiny space their cottage afforded. He was still eating sporadically—that hadn’t changed much—but now he was eating even smaller portions, sometimes barely nibbling at something before giving up.

Aziraphale noticed that he wasn’t sleeping very well either—Crowley would stay up late but then wake up very early, often beset by what appeared to be nightmares. This had become pretty standard fare for the two of them since they’d taken up regular sleeping patterns, but sometimes Crowley would just cry into his pillow afterwards instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, and Aziraphale had little doubt what those dreams could only be about.

It was difficult to determine the exact date on Earth, since Aziraphale wasn’t sure what day he’d died on and hadn’t really been keeping track of the ensuing days in any case, and Crowley was rarely so obliging as to walk past a calendar. He did manage to place it somewhere in late December, though, if the number of Christmas decorations around Midfarthing were anything to go by. Everyone in the village seemed cheerful and festive, eager to enjoy the break from their jobs. Everyone but Crowley, that was, who only seemed to grow more depressed the more cheerful villagers he saw.

Aziraphale couldn’t blame him—he was all too aware that this would be the first Christmas in over two thousand years that Crowley would be spending alone.

Crowley seemed to be thinking along similar lines, because when the twenty-fifth finally rolled around, he didn’t bother to crawl out of his bed until noon. He made his way to the loo and then the kitchen and went so far as to put some bread in the toaster, but then crawled onto the sofa and made no move to shift from his position for most of the afternoon. Around dinnertime he hobbled back to the kitchen, where he seemed mildly surprised to find the two cold toast slices in the toaster. He nibbled on one, seemed to lose his appetite halfway through, and threw the rest away. He returned to the sofa, pulling a blanket up over his shoulders and winding his hand in the ever-present tartan scarf.

Aziraphale, meanwhile, spent Christmas sitting alone in his armchair, eyes on the mirror. His own appetite had been swinging between nervously eating anything he could get his hands on, regardless of its slightly subpar taste, and hardly eating anything at all. Luckily, it seemed that the dead didn’t have to worry about carbs anymore than immortals did, and Aziraphale neither lost nor gained weight.

In fact, as far as he could tell, he hadn’t physically changed one bit since he’d first arrived, which in turn meant he looked largely as he had fifteen or so years ago. The one difference was that he’d taken to still wearing the spectacles he’d got in Midfarthing, even though his excellent vision had been restored to him along with his memory. His face had also apparently taken it upon itself to retain all the laugh lines, but removed the deep worried marks between his eyebrows.

Crowley, on the other hand, grew more haggard and drawn by the day. Aziraphale hadn’t seen him smile in at least a week, not even a little.

As the evening wore on, Aziraphale opened the bottle of wine he’d procured a few days before from his imagined Bert. He’d found quite by accident a few weeks ago that his heavenly cottage contained a number of bottles of wine from the same vintage he and Crowley always shared over Christmas, but Aziraphale hadn’t been able to bring himself to touch them. So he’d gone to Bert instead, and convinced him to hand something over. Even imagined wine, Aziraphale decided, was better than no wine, and at least this way Aziraphale wouldn’t feel quite so much like it was his fault their Christmas tradition had been broken.

Aziraphale moved to his usual place on the sofa and had just poured two glasses, setting Crowley’s on the floor next to his spot, when the Crowley in the mirror uncurled himself from the sofa.

Aziraphale frowned at the mirror as Crowley hobbled to the door, and it was only when he opened it to reveal Bert that he realised the barman must have knocked.

Bert was holding a bottle of wine and, after a moment’s discussion, Crowley let him in.

Aziraphale realised why Bert must be there, and felt a strange twist in his stomach. On one hand, he was glad Crowley wouldn’t be spending Christmas completely alone, even if it wasn’t with him, but on the other he found himself irrationally upset with Bert for imposing himself on something that was none of his business.

In the mirror, Crowley and Bert talked for a while as Bert opened the bottle of wine. Aziraphale shifted his gaze miserably to the glass of wine in his hand. Maybe _Aziraphale_ would be the one spending this Christmas alone, since Crowley clearly wouldn’t be needing his company.

Aziraphale swallowed down a lump in his throat with a sip of wine.

Crowley left Bert for a moment and walked into the kitchen. He opened one of the cabinets and Aziraphale realised with a sinking feeling what he’d come to fetch.

Crowley’s hand was mere centimetres away from the two matching wine glasses when he hesitated.

Aziraphale swallowed heavily, tightening his grip on the wine glass in his own hand as his eyes were drawn to its partner on the floor. They were the same wine glasses, of course, from the same shelf in Aziraphale’s heaven. _Their_ wine glasses.

Crowley stood there for a long moment, fingertips reflected in the curved glass, and then he finally lifted the glasses off the shelf and returned to Bert.

Aziraphale, feeling utterly replaced, took a very long swig of wine.

Crowley and Bert took a seat at the kitchen table, and they started drinking and talking.

Aziraphale could see their lips moving but couldn’t make out anything that was being said. He looked forlornly down at his glass and thought that he’d never felt so far away from Crowley as he did in that moment.

Crowley and Bert kept talking and Aziraphale drained his glass, refilled it, and drained it again.

The night wore on, Aziraphale gradually slumping against the arm of the sofa as he felt the corners of his eyes burning, trailing his fingers along the image of Crowley in the mirror over and over again, as though he thought he could reach through the surface to him.

He was remembering all of their previous Christmases, all their silly little debates or nostalgic conversations, even the ones near the end, when Aziraphale hadn’t been able to make much conversation before falling asleep on Crowley’s shoulder.

So he sat there and watched Crowley have one of those same conversations with Bert, wondering with a sort of pained interest what they were discussing. There was a part of him that wished viciously that Bert was a terrible conversationalist, and that Crowley wasn’t enjoying talking to him at all. Bert was only a human, after all, and there were just some jokes that you could only really get if you’d been there, with _there_ in this case being ancient Sumer. Those jokes were _theirs_ , were his and Crowley’s, just like _their_ glasses and _their_ Christmas tradition, and Aziraphale hated the idea that there was no more _their_ , just always _mine_ and _his_ , destined to never join again.

In the mirror, Crowley broke down and started crying, cheeks flushed. Bert did his best to comfort him, but Crowley just kept twisting his hand in the scarf at his neck.

This gesture might have comforted Aziraphale, except that he’d started sobbing himself a little before, properly sobbing, because this, he felt frighteningly, stunningly certain, was the beginning of the end. There would be no more shared Christmases, _ever_ , no more pairs of matching wine glasses, _ever_ —it was just going to be Aziraphale from here on out, trapped in his imagined paradise watching Crowley learn how to live without him.

Aziraphale drained the wine bottle and decided it was a lucky thing he didn’t have his powers, because it wouldn’t have stayed empty for very long. He could still feel the ache in his chest though, burning as hot as a brand, undimmed by the application of alcohol. The glass he’d poured for Crowley was still sitting untouched on the floor, as of course it would be. Aziraphale had been planning on leaving it for Crowley, but, given that Crowley hadn’t bothered to wait for him, he no longer saw any reason not to do the same.

Aziraphale drained Crowley’s glass and then curled up in the corner of the sofa, clinging to the mirror and unable to check the tears streaming down his cheeks.

Crowley and Bert were acting pretty friendly, and Crowley had moved closer to the barman, tugging almost insistently on his sleeve, head drooping towards his shoulder.

 _He used to do that to me,_ Aziraphale remembered with a sharp pang. _That was me, once._

Crowley twined his fingers in Bert’s sleeve and dipped his head against the barman’s shoulder.

Aziraphale’s eyes burned and he had to look away, blinking and pawing at his cheeks with the back of his sleeve.

When he looked back at the mirror again, rasping in shaky breaths, Bert had disentangled himself from Crowley and was wandering over to the sofa. Crowley was left sitting alone at the table, crying with his head in one hand while his other grasped at the wine bottle.

Despite Aziraphale’s earlier anger at Bert for replacing him, he now felt an irrational rush of frustration that Bert wasn’t filling his shoes properly. Crowley looked so desperately lonely, drunk and sobbing at _Christmas_ of all times, and here Bert was stretching out on the sofa for a nap.

“You—you don’t—don’t get to _leave him,_ do you hear me?” Aziraphale rasped angrily at the mirror as Crowley drained the wine bottle. “You stay with him ’til the bloody, bitter end—you never—I never—I’m _here_ —”

In the mirror, Crowley seemed to realise that Bert had left, because he started staggering over towards the sofa. He looked like he was mumbling something, one hand reaching up to grab at his scarf but missing. He made it to the foot of the sofa and stared down at it, apparently taking a few moments to register Bert’s presence before staggering around the front of the sofa.

Aziraphale blinked and looked away again. He’d woken from enough drunken nights with Crowley to find the demon curled up against him to know that he didn’t want to watch Crowley try to seek the same comfort from Bert.

Luckily, Crowley only lowered himself shakily to the floor, leaning with his back against the front of the sofa. Before Crowley’s eyes slid shut, he tugged the end of the tartan scarf closer, tangling his hand in the closest thing to a Christmas present Aziraphale had ever given him.

 

~~***~~

 

When Aziraphale awoke, it was to find that the fight had utterly drained out of him. His last vestige of hope that Crowley would figure it all out and arrive at his doorstep at any minute had finally fled him. So had his always somewhat fanciful notion that he could somehow convey a message to Crowley. It wasn’t happening—not now, possibly not ever.

So he stood up, rubbed at the dried tear tracks on his cheeks, and walked back into his Soho bookshop.

He spent a long time just staring at the sizeable pile of books, maps, and scrolls cluttering up the table. He’d tried so hard. So bloody hard.

He didn’t know why he’d wasted his time.

Aziraphale picked up the topmost book from the nearest pile and walked it back to its proper place in the shop. And then he did the same for the next book, and the next, and the next, until the table was as empty as he’d found it.

Then, because he wanted to say good-bye to it, Aziraphale walked to St James’s Park.

It was just as bright and sunny of a day as it had been with his imagined Crowley, so very long ago, though this time Aziraphale went alone. He didn’t bother buying bread for the ducks; he just sat down on one of the benches and looked out over the water.

He didn’t say anything; he didn’t have to. He just sat there, eyes dry, and then he left and walked back to the bookshop. From there he went into the cottage, sat down, and wondered without any real enthusiasm what he was supposed to do, exactly, for the rest of eternity.

 

~~***~~

 

The next day, Crowley left Midfarthing.

If Aziraphale had needed any further confirmation that Crowley was actively attempting to put Aziraphale behind him, he had it. Crowley left the home they had shared for eighteen years, and not to return to his Mayfair flat or Aziraphale’s bookshop, either. Instead, he went to, of all places, _Botswana_.

Admittedly, it did take Aziraphale several hours of watching Crowley board the plane and look miserably at the back of the seat in front of him (he hadn’t even bothered to fly first class) before he realised that Crowley was doing the exact same thing Aziraphale had done several weeks earlier—he was looking for somewhere that didn’t remind him of Aziraphale.

Crowley went to Botswana and Paraguay, America and Laos, and Aziraphale sat on his sofa and watched him.

Outwardly, Crowley seemed to be doing okay. He went places, ate food, and slept. He combed his hair when he woke up, straightened his cuffs, and put on his sunglasses. He appeared every inch the demon Aziraphale had spent the last six millennia with, but something was missing.

It took Aziraphale a couple of days to realise that it was the demon’s love for humanity. Crowley had always been eager to interact with the humans and admire their inventions, to explore all the numerous secondhand acts of Creation. But now, although he was, for the first time in a long time, in areas of the world that were completely new and fresh to him, he didn’t seem very interested in them. He’d walk around like he always had, but then he’d stop somewhere and just look at something, and grow so still and quiet that Aziraphale knew there was only one thing he could be thinking about.

And then there was the scarf. It was the only adaption to Crowley’s wardrobe, and one that Crowley seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about. Sometimes when he fell into one of those quiet spells, he would have one hand at his neck, fingers wound in the folds of the scarf.

Aziraphale talked to him sometimes, when he went very quiet, and imagined that Crowley was listening to him. He always told Crowley he was in Heaven, and then recounted some tale of their misadventures, remembering painfully how Crowley had once done the same for him.

Increasingly, Aziraphale felt his interest waning in doing anything other than sitting on the sofa with the mirror in his lap. His appetite vanished again, and even tea ceased to hold any special appeal for him. There was a heavy feeling in his chest, and it never really lifted.

Occasionally, Bert or Harper or one of his other imagined villagers would arrive at his door and offer him something—cream cakes, or alcohol, or companionship—but Aziraphale always ignored them until they went away. He had no need of imaginary comforts.

Even the sight of cream cakes no longer held the power to entice him. He couldn’t imagine ever enjoying anything so pedestrian again.

One day, as he sat watching Crowley hike along a ridge of hills towards an elaborate temple, Aziraphale realised with a stroke of panic that he could no longer remember Crowley’s voice.

He remembered bits of it, faintly, and occasionally he could conjure brief snippets of Crowley saying something in his mind, but he’d lost the thread of his voice. Crowley had had many, of course, in his different corporations over the years, but this one Aziraphale ought to have remembered the best. This was the voice of the Crowley he’d defied orders with, the Crowley he’d fallen in love with, the Crowley he’d given his life for.

The Crowley whose beautiful voice even Aziraphale’s excellent memory couldn’t seem to keep ahold of.

This rattled Aziraphale more than he cared to admit, and he just stared down at the mirror and wished he had died permanently after all. It was better to be dead, he thought, than to sit here, forgetting Crowley all over again as he watched Crowley forget him.

He was still staring blankly down at the mirror, not really registering the shapes moving on it, when there was a very sharp, authoritative knock on the door of the cottage.

Aziraphale barely heard it, feeling no curiosity as to who it might be.

“Principal—Fallen one!” said a loud voice from the other side of the door, accompanied by another round of banging. “Open this door immediately!”

Aziraphale continued staring at the mirror.

There was a pause, the sound of muttering, and then the door to the cottage was forced open, admitting Azrael.

The archangel took several strides into the cottage before coming to a halt. She looked angry, far angrier than she had when she’d first come to visit him. She showed no interest in looking around his heaven this time, either—she just strode up to Aziraphale and came to a stop directly in front of the sofa, glaring down at him.

Aziraphale didn’t look up. Had she come to smite him at last? He didn’t mind.

“Aziraphale!” she snapped. “You have disobeyed me.”

Aziraphale didn’t move.

Azrael stepped forward and reached down, taking Aziraphale’s chin in her hand and forcing his head up to meet her gaze. “There are souls roaming freely among the heavens,” she stated sharply. “And you had a hand in that, did you not?”

Aziraphale looked blankly at her. Her anger seemed completely overblown to him, far out of proportion to anything that really mattered. The world had come to a close at Christmas—what did it matter now if souls were roaming free?

“Well, speak!” Azrael demanded.

Aziraphale’s mouth was dry, but there was nothing he wanted to say anyway.

“You exited your heaven and moved among the others, freeing those souls within to move as they pleased,” Azrael said. “You have disobeyed your orders.”

Aziraphale looked back down at the mirror and wished she would just leave.

The archangel followed his gaze. “And what’s this—” She grabbed the mirror and yanked it from his hands before he could tighten his grip.

Aziraphale let out an involuntary sound of protest, feeling something stir in him for the first time in weeks, a spark of something that was still alive.

“Give that back,” he said, voice hoarse from disuse.

Azrael took a step back and surveyed her prize, scowling. After a moment she seemed to realise what it was, and her gaze softened.

The former principality struggled to his feet. “Give that back.”

Azrael looked at him and, after a moment, sighed. She glanced towards the door of the cottage where, Aziraphale noticed rather belatedly, two more angels were waiting, one of them with his sword unsheathed.

Azrael looked back at him. “Did you let the other souls out?” she asked.

Aziraphale locked his eyes on the mirror and shook his head. “Please,” he said, voice cracking. “Give that back.”

Azrael sighed again and handed the mirror back to him. “Do not dwell on things you cannot change,” she said, and then turned and strode out of the cottage.

He heard one of the angels outside ask something, voice muffled, and then he caught part of her reply: “...not him. He’s not in his right mind; looks like he hasn’t left that room in weeks…”

Aziraphale had sunk back onto the sofa before he even heard the flaps of their wings as they departed.

 

~~***~~

 

Azrael’s visit succeeded in bringing a bit of reality back to Aziraphale, however, and he used it as a foothold to climb out of his depression.

He convinced himself to start eating again, and managed to even sleep in a couple of mornings. Crowley was always perfectly all right when he returned to the mirror, always intact and just as Aziraphale had left him.

Crowley continued travelling the world until, one day, he didn’t. He got on a plane, and when he got off, he was back in Britain.

This time, Aziraphale really did expect him to go back to London, but instead he called a taxi and convinced the poor cabbie to drive him all the way out to Midfarthing.

Crowley, it seemed, was somehow, impossibly, still committed to him. He still had the scarf Aziraphale had made him wrapped around his neck, and now he was returning to their once-shared home. It was raining, because of course it was, but Crowley had seemed to be doing better in the last couple of days, and looked happy to be back among familiar scenery. He’d started smiling again, for one thing, and when he went to the pub and talked to Bert, he seemed like he was having a genuinely nice time.

It looked like Crowley had finally made his peace.

It didn’t hurt quite as much when Aziraphale watched him now, knowing that Crowley wasn’t in as much pain. Aziraphale also found with some relief that he had finally managed to secure some tiny bit of peace of his own, in the form of the scarf Crowley had taken with him all around the world and the knowledge that, if he still mattered to Crowley after all this time, he’d probably continue to for some time more.

The Bert in the mirror looked a little older, and a little softer as well. He smiled and greeted Crowley with a warm pat on the back, and Crowley looked, if anything, grateful to have returned from his wanderings. Aziraphale wondered if Midfarthing had finally become a home to Crowley, as it had to him.

The villagers would look after Crowley, Aziraphale decided, like they had before. Bert and Harper and all the rest would look after him, and Crowley would be okay.

And, one day, he might realise that Aziraphale had never stopped waiting for him.

In the mirror, Crowley walked home and, after a moment’s thought, carefully hung the tartan scarf on a hook near the door. He patted it a couple of times, fondly, before retiring upstairs.

The following morning, Aziraphale sat down on the sofa to keep Crowley company as he had almost every day since his death, and watched Crowley sort through a large pile of post on their kitchen table.

Someone must have knocked at the door, because in the mirror Crowley crossed to it and pulled it open.

Aziraphale started in surprise as he saw who it was—not Bert, not Donnie or Harper or Oscar or Faye Uphill, but _Adam Young_.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Aziraphale muttered to the mirror in surprise.

Crowley seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because there was a brief exchange at the threshold which resulted in Adam’s smile faltering. Crowley must be being short with him.

Then, after a moment, Crowley grabbed the tartan scarf from where he’d hung it near the door, wrapped it securely around his neck, and the two of them stepped outside.

Crowley started leading the Antichrist onto a path that Aziraphale knew skirted the village, and he frowned at them in confusion.

They were clearly discussing something, and whatever it was seemed to be distressing Crowley. Aziraphale could think of only a handful of circumstances that would require the Antichrist coming to talk to Crowley in person, and none of them were good. Had something happened?

They hadn’t gone far when Adam reached out and put his hand on Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley rocked to a halt immediately, eyes widening in shock.

Aziraphale felt himself sit up much straighter, hands gripping the edge of the mirror. “What’re—you bastard—”

But then Adam removed his hand and Crowley appeared to be unharmed. He looked bewildered, actually, and when Adam continued walking, Crowley trailed after him.

“What was that about…?” Aziraphale wondered aloud to himself. He’d really got into the habit of talking to himself.

Crowley seemed less upset with Adam as they continued their walk, though after a moment he started looking miserable again, eyes on the ground as he moodily kicked a rock in his path.

They talked for a little while more, and then Crowley stopped abruptly, head snapping around to look at Adam in utter surprise, mouth even gaping open a little.

Aziraphale felt a sudden, impossible tremor of true hope. _What if Adam was telling Crowley where he was?_ Adam likely had access to that sort of information, might even have motive to seek Crowley out to pass it along—and there it was, the twinkling, knowing look in Adam’s eye, and Aziraphale wondered, speechless, if _this_ was in fact the reason why Adam was there.

“Please,” Aziraphale whispered to the mirror, suddenly, irrevocably certain this was the case. “Please, please, please, please.”

He sent up a wild, urgent prayer to his Father, just in case He was listening, in case it might help: _Please, if it’s the last thing I ever ask of You, let him know. Adam’s right there. Just let him know, please, if I ever meant anything to You, if there is an ounce of mercy, an inch of grace I may yet beg_ —

In the mirror, Crowley and Adam were still talking, and Crowley’s face was showing a peculiar mixture of shell-shock, confusion, and hope. The latter was a strange expression on the former demon, so long unseen but now so very welcome.

“Tell him,” Aziraphale urged Adam. “Tell him, oh, please, Crowley, I’m here. I’m _right here_ , I’m in Heaven—”

He broke off, straining to hear what was being said in the mirror even though he’d never heard a word from it, struggling to perhaps read their lips.

Crowley said something, looking a little confused, and Aziraphale thought he might have seen his own name on the former demon’s lips.

Adam shook his head patiently and replied, gesturing, and Aziraphale realised eagerly that he was explaining something to Crowley.

Crowley now looked a little less confused but still didn’t seem to be grasping whatever Adam was explaining. This time Aziraphale really did catch Crowley’s one-word reply: _So?_

Adam replied, hands pointing something out, but Crowley only blinked at him.

“I’m here,” Aziraphale said softly, as though this time his message might get through. “I’m right here, my dear; I’m waiting for you.”

Adam sighed and said something else, and Aziraphale guessed he was phrasing his explanation in another way, one he thought Crowley might better understand.

And then, abruptly, Crowley went very still. He was staring at Adam, who continued speaking, a smile on his face.

Crowley kept staring at him, looking like something of vital importance had just been made clear to him. And then, all at once, an expression of such sheer hope and disbelief came over his features that Aziraphale felt absolutely certain he knew exactly what had been said.

“Yes!” Aziraphale shouted, perhaps a little too loudly, jumping to his feet and staring down at the mirror in equal disbelief, hands shaking so badly he could barely keep the precious sheet of glass steady.

In the mirror, Crowley rocked forward ever so slightly and then vanished from view, and Aziraphale could almost see his beautiful black wings—no, white wings now—spreading out on either side of him as he launched himself upward and into the ethereal plane.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, oh, _thank you!”_ Before the image of Adam could flicker away to nothing in the mirror, Aziraphale leaned forward and kissed its polished surface. He would have to thank the Antichrist most adamantly the next time he saw him, ought to give so many thanks to his Father for granting him this one gift that he outshone the angels in devotion.

The image in the mirror faded away to nothing, and then Aziraphale was simply staring at his own reflection, looking relieved beyond measure. He would get to see Crowley again, very soon, get to pull him tight, get to gaze into his beautiful golden eyes and hear his lovely voice—yes, the voice Aziraphale had half-forgotten, he would hear it again—

Aziraphale choked back a sob and hugged the mirror tightly to his chest. He tried to steady his breathing but his heart was beating too rapidly, soaring in his chest for the first time since his death, because _Crowley was coming_.

Aziraphale forced himself to take a deep breath and relinquish his vice-like grip on the frame of the mirror. He held it out in front of himself instead, looking at his reflected image critically and running a hand nervously through his hair. He looked a mess.

He glanced down at himself and realised dimly that he also was in his pyjamas, having given up on formal clothing several months ago. That just wouldn’t do, not if Crowley was coming!

Aziraphale glanced at the mirror again, out of habit, but it no longer gave him any indication of where Crowley was—it was only able to portray people and places on the Earth, and Crowley was no longer among that group. Aziraphale kissed the frame of the mirror, as thanks for all it had done, and hastily shoved it next to some books on the bookshelf. He then glanced at the antique clock on the wall, marked the time, and sprinted upstairs.

He changed as quickly as possible, grabbing the first set of clean clothes he could find that were somewhat presentable. He carded a hand nervously through his hair as he hurried back downstairs, trying to school his unruly locks into some semblance of order. His mind was a blur of all the things he wanted to tell Crowley and show him, while simultaneously reminding himself that he ought to keep things light and not worry Crowley too much if he could.

And did he have a lot of time to prepare? How long would Crowley take to find him? Would the other angels try to stop him? Would Azrael let Crowley enter the heavens and pass through the gate?

Aziraphale started rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt as he dashed back and forth between the cottage and the bookshop, uncertain of which Crowley would arrive at, straightening furniture, tucking away books, and tossing all of the empty wine bottles into the recycling. There were more of them than he’d originally thought, and he was just finishing shoving the last of them under the sink when there came a nervous, long-anticipated knock at the door to the bookshop.

Aziraphale stood up so quickly he would have certainly hit his head on the underside of the cabinets if he’d been standing any closer.

 _That was quick_ , Aziraphale thought, glancing at the antique clock as he hurried out of the cottage and into the bookshop, trying to repress a sudden, last-minute apprehension about the moment he’d been waiting for for almost an entire year.

And then Aziraphale crossed to the door, took a steadying, disbelieving breath, and pulled it open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! This fic breaks off just as the coda of A Memory of Eden begins, so if you want to read Crowley and Aziraphale's reunion, that's where you ought to go (http://archiveofourown.org/works/7534309/chapters/17760559).
> 
> There will be one more rather major fic after this one-- the proper Sequel to A Memory of Eden-- which I'm hoping to start posting by the end of the summer *fingers crossed*. That will close out this universe, but I'll probably write a couple more small companion pieces afterwards looking at some of the minor characters. Stay tuned if you're interested!


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